Harry Potter and the Saimin Saimin Fruit
by Joshua The Evil Guy
Summary: AU HP/OP crossover Harry comes across a Devil Fruit from the Grand Line while in Diagon Alley. It ends up being the Hypno Hypno Fruit, giving Harry the power to hypnotize anyone at all with complete ease.
1. Prologue

Title: Harry Potter and the Saimin Saimin Fruit

Author: Joshua

Disclaimer: JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. The Devil Fruit concept belongs to Shonen Manga and Eiishiro Oda, who owns and created "One Piece" respectively. No other crossover between One Piece and Harry Potter will be occurring other than the Devil Fruit. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me.

Summary: HP/OPxover. Harry comes across a Devil Fruit from the Grand Line while in Diagon Alley. It ends up being the Hypno Hypno Fruit, giving Harry the power to hypnotize anyone at all with complete ease.

Prologue:

_London, England_

_Diagon Alley_

_July 31, 1991_

Harry James Potter was in something of a tailspin at the moment. The events of the past week, the previous 'night', and then the entire day so far had taken his world, put it in a blender, shaken the pieces up, and then thrown them out the hatch of the space shuttle on reentry. In other words, things had changed and he was having trouble dealing with it all.

Last week, he'd been the unwanted ward of his Aunt and Uncle and knew his parents had died in a car crash, planning on going to a school for juvenile delinquents. Last night, he learned his parents had been murdered, magic was real, he was a wizard, and he was going to a school for witchcraft and wizardry. Just this morning, he learned he was some kind of magical savior, people looked at his scar like he was the Second Coming, and he knew magic was real and that there were such things as witches and wizards. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to learn next or what he'd know by the end of the day.

Hagrid, the kind and gentle giant that had taken him away from his relatives (and for that alone Harry would praise Hagrid as the savior in his story), introduced him to magic, and taken him to an Alley in downtown London that was some kind of magical shopping center. They had just stepped out of Ollivander's, the wand-maker, and he'd just gotten his wand, an owl, and so much other stuff he wasn't entirely sure about all of it. To make things even more crazy, he'd learned that his wand held the brother-core to the wand of the monster that killed his parents. Now there's something to brag about. NOT!

After leaving the wand shop, Hagrid had said _something_ about going and getting drunk. Well, what he'd actually said he would just nip off to the _Leaky Cauldron_ for a pint, but it was muffled and hard to understand with the giant's accent. Which left Harry holding an owl and a wand in the middle of the street and no where to go. Thankfully Hagrid had taken all the packages and bags with his school supplies with him, as Harry really didn't want to contemplate dragging all that stuff up and down the Alley.

He briefly considered going by that Racing Broom store he'd seen on the way in, but finally decided to follow Hagrid instead. After all, that place had to be more than a bar and serve more than drinks, right?

Then again, from Harry's experiences with Hagrid so far, the man didn't strike him as much of a thinker, so rather than run the risk of skipping lunch because the big man forgot to buy him food or something like that, Harry started looking for a food vendor on the Alley somewhere. Before he could reach the Ice Cream parlor, which was his ultimate destination he was sure, he passed a dark corner that lead to an off shoot from the main street. Like another alley off the Alley, or something like that.

Right out in front, but still in the shadows of the side alley, was a fruit vendor. Selling what looked like three different types of fruit for one galleon each. He couldn't decipher what the fruit names were, but he was curious, and unlike his fat relatives, he knew that fruit was supposed to be good for you.

So, curiosity driving him, he stepped into the shadows and asked the cloaked vendor, "Uh, I'll have one please."

The figure hidden within the cloak jumped, but not enough that Harry could see who, or what, lay beneath the black cloth. Finally, a surprisingly strong and youthful sounding voice answered back, "One what?"

Harry frowned. Not much of a salesperson here.

"One fruit, please," he pointed at the middle tray of fruit, which had the highest stack of them on the counter. He then pulled out a single gold piece and placed it on the counter. "The green one please. Better to get them ripe, so they last longer."

The cloaked figure seemed to stare at Harry for a moment or two, and then in the next, his coin was gone and the aforementioned 'green fruit' was placed into a chest-like box and handed to Harry without a word being said. Except one final warning just as he turned away.

"A word of advice, Mr. Potter," the cloaked figure called. "Yes, I know you're name. You're very recognizable Mr. Potter. My advice is, don't eat any other fruit than that one. At least not from me. And stay away from pools. Can you swim Mr. Potter?"

"Uh, no, never really learned how," Harry was forced to admit.

"Pity. If you eat that fruit, I'm afraid you never will. Good day, Mr. Potter," with that the cloaked figure settled back down behind the fruit stand. Harry hurried on to the ice cream parlor and tried to forget the whole experience. An hour later, Hagrid finally stumbled back out of the pub and took Harry back to his house on Number 4 Privet Drive.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, the Dursley's were still stuck out on that bit of rock in the fishing hut until the day after tomorrow, when the owner of the shack would come and check on the renters and let them go back to their car. The meant that Harry had the entire house to himself for a whole extra day, but it also meant that he was stuck taking care of himself and Aunt Petunia hadn't gone shopping prior to Uncle Vernon's breakdown.

So, for dinner on his birthday, Harry fixed himself a cake and the lamb roast Aunt Petunia had been saving for a special occasion. He'd had to prepare such meals a dozen times since he was old enough to carry things without dropping them, so it was easy and rewarding without his Aunt looking over his shoulder or his Uncle and Cousin clambering for their meal like a bunch of noisy pigs while he got stuck with scraps and leftovers. Not that there were a lot of leftovers in the Dursley household.

The next morning, Harry finished off all of Dudley's cereals for breakfast and lunch. But for dinner, he was stuck as there was nothing left that would do a lot of good as a meal. Until he remembered that fruit he'd bought on Diagon Alley.

He pulled it out from his stuff and opened the chest-box it had been placed into and inspected it. It kind of looked like a zucchini, but juicier and it had strangely hypnotic spirals all over it. Even when it looked like there was already one spiral in one spot, it turned out there were three or more overlapping all over the thing. It was still the same ripe green color, and if Harry didn't know any better, he'd swear the thing was glowing. But only out of the corner of his eye, and not very noticeably.

Seeing that he really didn't have much else to eat, Harry shrugged to himself and started preparing it. He didn't know a lot you could do with zucchini, but there was this one recipe of his Aunt's, where you could fry it and eat it with chips and sauce. Cutting into the green fruit, he saw the insides were an odd red color. Not really knowing what the inside of a zucchini was supposed to look like anyway, he sliced it up and put the strips on a frying pan.

Half an hour of preparation later, Harry took the first bite of his home-cooked meal with the magical plant. He almost spit it out the second it touched his tongue, but struggled through and swallowed.

"Ugh!" Harry gagged. "Must have still been ripe. Or it went rotten or something," he shuddered and quickly finished his meal. Now he knew why Dudley always pitched a fit whenever fruits and vegetables were on the table. This thing was the worst thing he'd ever eaten, bar none!

Washing the dishes, and scraping what remained of his meal into the trash, Harry spent another hour trying to wash the taste of it from his mouth. The Dursley's walked in on him still doing that an hour before midnight.

"BOY! ARE YOU HERE?!" Vernon bellowed the second the door slammed open.

Harry did a spit take with the water in his mouth, spewing all over the mirror at the unexpected voice.

They weren't supposed to be back until the next day!

Gulping nervously, Harry cautiously and quietly stepped out into the main hall way. There they all were, bags in hand, Vernon in front, face purple with rage, Dudley and Petunia at his back and looking rather pale and haggard from their trip.

_'Don't see me, don't see me, don't see me, please oh please don't see me!'_ Harry thought desperately to himself as he stepped into view. He saw when their eyes all rested on him, and he nervously flinched back, raising his hands slightly.

He wasn't really quite sure what happened, but the next thing Harry knew, neon green spiral lights came from his raised hands and all of the Dursleys' eyes seemed to dull and glaze over (couldn't really tell with Dudley though), and then Vernon started tearing through the house shouting "BOY!" at random intervals. The really odd part though, was that he passed by Harry several times, and never seemed to see him, yet still avoided touching him.

From the Dursleys' point of view, they all _thought_ they saw Harry for a second when they stepped in, but then decided they must have been mistaken, because they didn't see him at all. What they each saw was unique to the person, but whenever their physical eyes saw Harry Potter, their minds interpreted the information as _anything but_ Harry Potter. Vernon saw a pile of bills and overdue payments. Petunia saw a mound of dirt and dust and clutter. Dudley saw Hagrid's umbrella.

Whatever the hallucination, whatever the sight Harry appeared to them as, the end result was all that mattered, as whatever it was they did see was something they each wanted to avoid for as long as possible. As soon as they stopped looking at him, they forgot all about the hallucination and whatever it would normally mean to them. It was just something to avoid and that they "didn't see" no matter what.

After about five minutes of this, Harry went upstairs to his "new room" and went to bed, figuring the whole thing was a bad reaction to the rotten zucchini. In the morning, however, he learned differently.

_Diagon Alley_

_August 3, 1991_

Harry walked hesitantly down the Alley, not nearly so confident when he didn't have a giant man with an umbrella that could use _technically_ illegal magic at his side, but he needed answers and there was only one place he could get them from.

Something had happened after he'd eaten that weird fruit. He'd determined that it was not zucchini, but whatever it was, it had changed him. Or done something to him. Out of all the weird things to have happened to him over the weekend, that was the only thing that stood out in his mind as being what could have even possibly changed him. Well that, and the warning from the vendor he bought the fruit from.

Which is exactly what he was doing back on Diagon Alley only three days after he finished buying all his school supplies. He had to find that fruit vendor and get some answers. And, Harry suspected, he was more than capable enough to force those answers if he had to.

It had started the morning before, after the Dursley's returned and ignored him despite looking all over the house for him. He woke up and went downstairs to prepare breakfast as he always did. Aunt Petunia was already there, and Uncle Vernon came down shortly after. The moment they saw him, they started yelling and carrying on and on about what he would do and what they wouldn't allow. Finally, it all got to be too much and Harry lost his temper.

After all these years, there wasn't much that could make Harry lose his temper, but after having a couple days Dursley-free and learning about magic and what really happened to his parents, enough was enough. He felt something hot, or maybe just warm, swell up in his eyes, it felt like all his rage bottled up behind his eyeballs. Then he shouted at the, glaring angrily at the two adults, "Both of you just shut up and look at me!!"

They did, and then their eyes glazed over and they went slack-jawed. Vernon drooled a little bit. Harry was stunned. One second they'd been yelling at him, then when he shouts back they stand there like a couple of zombies!

From their perspective, something much more odd had occurred. They were about to lay into the boy for talking back to them, when his eyes flashed green and a pair of neon green spirals emerged from each flashing green orb, and then they weren't thinking much of anything at all, except that they had to look at him and that they had to shut up.

About five minutes of experimentation later, Harry discovered that he'd just hypnotized his Aunt and Uncle and they would do anything he said without question. It was like they had no thoughts in their heads but what he said. Anything requiring actual thought or that was more complex than a single action and they showed signs of waking up, or he had to "talk" them into it. When he snapped them out of it, just by telling them to wake up and snapping his fingers, they resumed shouting at him and berating him for talking back. Then he remembered the night before and what had happened with his hands when he didn't want them to see him.

_'Sleep!'_ he thought and raised his hands again, unconsciously wiggling his fingers rather hypnotically. Again, he saw the neon green spiral come from both his hands and the next thing he knew, his Aunt and Uncle passed out on the floor in front of him, fast asleep.

Some additional experimentation later with his family, Dudley included, he figured out that he could hypnotize them quite easily and without any effort. He could use his hands, and apparently his eyes too, but he'd also found that he could hypnotize with just his voice, and he seemed to naturally know what to say to put them into a trance. A day of having them as his hypno-slaves and doing all the chores they used to make him do, and playing with all of Dudley's toys was pretty cool. Then the mailman came by and Harry accidentally hypnotized him. And then the neighbors by just waving hello to them.

Thus, Harry realized that something had happened to him and he needed to find out what before he did something irreversible! Thankfully it was child's play to get Vernon to drive him into London and to the Leaky Cauldron specifically and then wait in the car while Harry went to get his answers.

Thankfully, the same fruit vendor was right where he'd been when Harry last saw him. Not bothering with hiding his purpose, or his scar for that matter, he walked right up to the cloaked figure and demanded, "What exactly was that fruit you sold me?"

The figure inside the cloak looked up, though Harry still could not see inside, and remarked, "Ah, I see you've discovered the power. Which one was it, I wonder?"

Harry glared, but carefully kept the 'warmth', what he realized was his hypno-power from his eyes. "I don't think you want to find out, and I can't easily get answers from a zombie with no thoughts. The truth. Please. What was that fruit? What have I done to myself?"

"Hm, polite and intelligent," the figure commented, "Very well. You may call me Roger, for ease of conversation. And you bought, and apparently ate a _Paramecia Fruit_ of the Cursed Devil Fruit of the Grand Line. It then bestowed upon you a superhuman ability, while cursing you to never be able to swim or be in water for the rest of your natural life."

"D-devil? Cursed Devil Fruit?" Harry stuttered.

The cloaked figure, Roger shrugged. "You don't strike me as the type that enjoys swimming all that much anyway. Although, fair warning for one so polite, if you do enter the water, you'll sink straight to the bottom. Like a hammer. You'll also lose all strength, and the power that you've gained will be useless to you."

Harry gulped nervously.

"Now, if you wouldn't mind Mr. Potter, telling me exactly which fruit it was that you consumed?" Roger asked politely.

Harry took a moment to compose himself, then hesitantly answered, "Uh, the-the green one with all the spirals on... it..." He then only just noticed that _all_ of the fruit on the stand was covered in odd spirals. He quickly moved on. "Uh, right. Well, it looked sort of like a zucchini, but the insides were all red."

Roger sighed and shook his head. "No, my apologies. I meant what _power_ did you gain from the fruit?"

"Oh," Harry squeaked. "Uh, I can hypnotize people."

"Ah, yes, the Saimin Saimin no Mi. In English, I suppose you would call it the Hypno Hypno Fruit." Roger told him. "Well, there's not much more to say. I'm sorry about all this Mr. Potter, but once consumed, there is no way to be _un_-cursed by the Devil Fruit. Have a good day."

Harry just stared, not really sure what had just happened. He'd gotten the answers to his question, but that left him with a dozen more questions! Unfortunately, this stranger before him was not the one to answer those questions. Those answers would have to come from himself.

"Uh, yeah," Harry mumbled as he slowly turned to leave. "Thank you for your time. Goodbye."

Roger watched the boy silently leave, and managed to restrain the laughter until he was finally out of sight. These wizards truly were stupid! As much as all the Cursed Fruit on his stand was worth on the Grand Line, here he was practically giving them away for a galleon a fruit, and the _only one_ to have taken one and discovered the power, it was the 11-year-old Boy-Who-Lived! The gods truly loved irony!

On his way back to the car, Harry stopped off at the book store and bought the only book they had on hypnotism in the entire collection. He then had Vernon stop at several other normal bookstores on the way home and picked up a wider selection at each location. When he got back home, he spent the entire month of August studying. Well, studying and practicing.

To Be Continued...?

Please Review If You're Interested In Reading More!

– Joshua "The Evil Guy"


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One:

_King's Cross Station_

_Platform 9 ¾_

_Sunday, September 1_

Harry looked around the platform with wide eager eyes, taking everything in all at once. He'd gotten here early, thanks to his Uncle driving him into town as he went in for work. It was thanks to his aunt though that allowed him entrance to the magical platform in the first place. Asking her questions about what his mother had experienced and shared with her sister when they'd been growing up and Lily, his mother, was going to Hogwarts herself. It had been a rare opportunity for Harry to hear anything at all about his parents growing up, so he made sure that his Aunt Petunia was reminiscing almost daily now.

His month "practicing" with the Dursley's had more than paid off. For one thing, he learned how to use his "cursed powers" effectively, but more importantly, he learned how not to use them. So he could wave at people and look them in the eye without having to worry they'd turn into a zombie at his next word. At the same time, he managed to expand and gain finer control over his hypnotic abilities. Enough that rather than just waving his hand and hoping for the best, he could use it intentionally and know if it was working or not and doing what he wanted.

He even, as children are wont to do, came up with cool names for the skills he had developed. Nothing lame like "Super Hypno Power Activate!" or that kind of cack. No, he came up with decent names that he wouldn't be embarrassed to say out loud if he wanted to.

So far he'd come up with three basic skills. Well, he considered them basic. In truth it was more like one basic skill, one advanced skill, and his ace in the hole. Each with their own 'name' and way he could use it.

The first basic skill was what he'd used instinctively against the Dursley's only an hour after first eating the devil fruit. When he'd thrown up his hands, keeping only a single thought in his head, they'd each suffered different hallucinations that ended in the result he desired. He'd learned how to just raise his pinky finger to get the same result as his whole hand. He called it "H. Illusion", the h of course standing for hypnotic.

It worked in more ways than just ensuring people couldn't see him or would ignore him too. He could have the thought in his head for them to act like a chicken, and they would hallucinate that they were a chicken and act accordingly. So long as he focused on a single thought when casting the illusion, the subject would have any kind of hallucination at all that would result in what Harry wanted them to do, no matter what.

The next skill he'd mastered was the second that he'd naturally come across. At first he was going to call it what it obviously was, Hypno-Eyes, but that was too obvious and was kind of corny at the same time. So, spending some time reading about it in the psychology books he'd been reading, he decided to use an acronym for it. He thought it was rather inspired, and it wouldn't draw undue attention to him if anybody ever caught him using his powers without him first catching them.

He called it LIME, which stood for "Look Into My Eyes" and it worked too. He'd even learned how to focus it so not everybody he was looking at would be hypnotized either. He just associated a number to the name, and whatever number he said after "LIME" would be the number of people caught in the effect of his hypno eyes.

For example, if all three Dursley's were standing in front of him, and he only wanted to hypnotize Uncle Vernon, or maybe Vernon and Dudley together, he would make sure they were looking at him and then say out loud and to himself, "LIME 1" or "LIME 2" and even if Aunt Petunia was looking at him as well, only those two would be hypnotized. She would probably witness the effect, or just see them fall into a trance, but would not fall into one herself. That had taken him a couple weeks and was what he considered an advanced skill.

His ace in the hole however, was something that had taken him a week to discover and most of the month to learn to control, something that he called "Brainwash". Not real brainwashing, or even mind control for that matter. What he did was put his hands on the subject's head, and then locked eyes with them, sort of like a Vulcan mind-meld, but without the melding part. He then channeled his full power, the 'warmth', into the subjects head. After that, he could rewrite their subconscious, and even their whole consciousness into whatever he wanted. In a way it was _kind of_ like brainwashing, but not in the classical sense, however much the end result was the same. So far he'd only done it to Dudley (by accident), and Vernon (not by accident), but the effects were... frightening.

He'd turned Dudley into his "Best Friend Forever" that was like having a big fat bull dog puppy that will follow you and do whatever you want even after kicking it, throwing it in a garbage dumpster, and sending it to the pound. Or in Dudley's case, having him beat up by all the kids that he used to beat up, having him throw himself in a garbage dumpster, and getting him sent to juvey. Harry Potter could do no wrong in Dudley Dursley's eyes now and deserved his absolute unquestioning loyalty.

Vernon... well, let's just say he was what Harry experimented on. One day he'd even turned the big tub of lard into an infant, just to see if he could. Then an absolute genius of scary intelligence. Then a whole slew of different farm and zoo animals. Finally he settled on making him a virtual saint of saints. The man now had no concept of prejudice, hatred, or bigotry in any form. He would soon become England's number one charity worker to boot.

Aunt Petunia, as he already said, he had her remembering things from her childhood and formative years that the woman had actively tried to suppress ever since graduating herself. He didn't 'Brainwash' her at all, too scared of corrupting the valuable information hidden in her memories, but she did spend most of the month under trance, with the compulsion that she could not lie or deceive Harry in anyway, and occasional PHS, Post-Hypnotic Suggestions, to do all the chores that she once made Harry do on a daily basis. Harry still cooked all his own meals though, because after having him do it for all these years, the woman had lost whatever skill she had in the kitchen. The Dursley's started eating a lot more TV Dinners during that month.

The rest of the time though, when Harry wasn't experimenting with his new abilities, or reading as many of the books he'd bought, both magical and psychological, he was interviewing her and asking question after question about his parents.

Unfortunately, she'd never met his father, but the stories she could tell him about his mother and her "friend" from down the street, some boy named Snape, were wonderful enough that he chose not to dwell on the disappointment.

The currently most useful piece of information he'd gleaned from Aunt Petunia's ramblings were Lily's experiences with riding on the train, and the 'clues' she had shared with her sister when the two of them were still close, which only lasted to the beginning of Lily's second year at Hogwarts, and then there was a falling out that Petunia blamed on Lily, but Harry suspected was a mutual disagreement due to the distance between them.

He found the 'barrier' easily enough thanks to those clues and a quickly run through and he was on the magical platform 9 ¾. After a minute of staring at all the families coming and going and the other students there early like he was, he found a couple of older students that weren't really doing anything at the moment, waved cheerily at them while thinking '_Follow Me_' and focused his power to the waving hand. The green spiral energy caught both of them and a second later they were following the young boy like they'd just been standing there waiting for him all along.

Another wave when he stopped put them into a deeper trance. That was the first thing he'd learned from the psychology books on hypnosis. The deeper the trance, the easier it was to get a person to do stuff. The other thing was that hypnosis was not automatically "Mind Control" it was just a way to relax the mind and speak to the subconscious, the 'animal mind' one text called it.

Once someone was relaxed enough, the real trick was in _convincing_ the person to do what you wanted them to do, rather than whatever they would normally want to do. Harry had seen Vernon do the same thing, and likewise be convinced himself, without the need of hypnosis at all. That's why they were called Post-Hypnotic _Suggestions_, rather than commands. The person, if they were strong willed enough, or not convinced that they should agree in the first place, could fight it off because it was just that, a suggestion, something another person had told them to do. But just because of that, not everyone would do it. Unless they agreed with the suggestion in the first place that is.

Simple stuff, however, was easier than most thought. For example; the two older students Harry just 'zapped' and had follow him. If he'd verbally spoken without any hypnosis at all, they probably still would have followed him out of simple curiosity. What he said to them next, again, they might have done anyway, though their conscious minds might have argued that there was no reason for them to do so, while their subconscious minds just reacted purely to stimuli and made no arguments of any kind.

"Carry my trunk and things, will you boys?" Harry grinned and lead the way to the compartment he wanted to stay in, while the two older students did indeed grab his trunk, Hedwig's cage and the other things on the trolley and follow behind him. After making sure his things were secured, he told them, "Thanks. You can go back to what you were doing before, but you might want to mingle a bit more. Meet the new students and younger years, learn their names, that sort of thing. You'd be surprised who you can meet on a platform while waiting for a train. And don't forget to be in your own compartments before the train departs. You can go now."

They both left without a word and didn't so much as glance back. As they left the train to get back on the platform, they both frowned and shook their heads, trying to figure out what they'd been doing and why they suddenly wanted to start talking to the other students, then shrugged it off and went back to the same corner where Harry had found them. Though they did exchange a few words between each other, where before they had been completely silent.

Harry saw this and shrugged. Just goes to show how far suggestions can really go.

Seeing that he had plenty of time before the train would be leaving, Harry went back out onto the platform himself and just started wandering around. He saw lots of people and their families, usually coming in, putting the luggage away, and then having long-lasting farewells and that sort of thing. For the most part, he got the occasional stare, but otherwise he was ignored as just a random kid. It helped that he'd found a hat not too long after getting to the train station and had been wearing it even before he'd stepped onto the platform. He imagined that was what the stares were for, after all it wasn't everyday, he assumed, that wizards and witches got to see a kid wearing a ten gallon cowboy hat pulled low over his brow.

Well, not in England anyway.

After a while though, Harry got very bored. There weren't any shops or anything at all like on the other side of the barrier. In fact the whole place was just what it was, a train platform for the Hogwarts Express, nothing more, nothing less. It wasn't until the last hour that most of the families even started arriving, and more than half appeared with a single child, and luggage, between two parents at a cordoned off area that had a big sign saying 'Hogwarts Apparition Point' and a great big red arrow pointing straight down at a series of concentric circles. It didn't take him long to figure out that Apparition was the 'appearing-out-of-thin-air' trick that was usually accompanied by a sound reminiscent of a gunshot.

The rest were coming through the barrier, and usually those people were the few lone children like himself that were just as clearly muggleborn. Apparently their parents could not get through the barrier and their goodbyes had already been said before coming through.

Curious and bored, Harry finally went back up to the barrier, waited a minute to make sure that no one was coming through, and then tentatively put his hand through the brick wall. It went through like air. More confident now, he walked back through the barrier onto the muggle side, and was nearly bowled over by a tall redhead pushing a trolley filled with a trunk and a caged owl on top.

"Cripes!" Harry shouted and bolted backwards through the barrier.

He stepped back and tried to catch his breath and waited for his heart to slow down. About a minute later, the red haired boy came through, though much slowly than he'd been going at first. Harry chuckled and waved, normally, and then shrugged.

He was about to say something, when two more redheads came through one after the other behind him. Harry thought for a moment he was seeing double as these two were virtually identical, save they wore different colored socks. One had red on the left foot and yellow on the right foot, and the other had yellow on the left foot and red on the right foot. Other than that, they were dressed as identically as they looked.

"Eh, sorry about that!" Harry scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment, blushing.

"It's quite all right," the first boy said. He looked to be about 16 years old and had a badge with a 'P' on it pinned to his sweater. "You weren't hurt, were you?"

"No, just scared out of my wits. I didn't think anybody was coming through," Harry admitted sheepishly. "Sorry about that. Really, I am."

"Oh, not to worry dear," a middle-aged red haired woman spoke, having come through the moment Harry began his apology. "Though you did give us quite the scare there. Normally you don't have much thru-traffic through the barrier. I'm just grateful no one was hurt. You weren't hurt, were you, dear?"

"Uh, no," Harry blinked, surprised at this woman's abrupt and nearly overwhelming kindness.

"That's good, now..." she trailed off as her attention shifted to the redheaded boys, who were quite obviously her children. "FRED! GEORGE!" She stomped off without saying another word to Harry, and he couldn't blame her having seen what the twins, who were most likely the aforementioned Fred and George, were doing with their older brother's trunk and owl cage while his back was turned.

Trailing along behind the kind, yet loud woman were two more red haired children, another boy and a shy-looking girl. Harry then did a double-take at the girl, and reconsidered his first assessment. Shy looking or not, the girl was taking in everything with a critical eye, but not judging, merely observing and absorbing. Her brother, on the other hand, he looked around once, and then stuck to his mother like a duckling.

Harry had also read some other things in those psychology books than just things about hypnosis. One of which ways to tell how a person is feeling and how that is conveyed in how they move in their day to day lives. A nervous person will walk with their shoulders drawn up, almost hunched over and be looking around at everything without being able to sit still. A confident person walks with their shoulders back, their head and eyes facing forward, and a calm, easy way of walking that conveyed their confidence to others.

The girl's brother, the youngest boy was, oddly enough, filling both roles equally at the same time. He was glancing all over the place, and had an air of tension around him, but at the same time his shoulders were relaxed, his head was level and staring straight forward, and his movements were declaring that he was supposed to be there and he was doing what he was meant to be doing and he had no problem with that. Equally nervous/scared, with confidence and security.

Then there was the girl herself. Where her brother was a walking contradiction, she was making a rather bold statement. She was shy. Everything from her posture, to her eyes, her way of looking around, and even the way she dressed boldly proclaimed to any that lay eyes on her that she was a shy wallflower and would squeak and scamper as soon as look at you.

Except that it was all a lie.

It was tough to spot, but he saw it just as clearly as he could see the contradiction that was her brother. She wasn't as confident, or maybe arrogant, as her brothers were, but she was nowhere near as shy as she was pretending to be. Their eyes briefly met and while she quickly averted her gaze, he saw genuine curiosity and a bit of intelligence in those eyes. This girl knew exactly what she was doing.

Harry saw and interpreted all this in the brief moments it took the family to walk away from him towards the train, and he couldn't help but be interested in who they were. Following along behind them, he happened to glance at the clock and saw the train would be leaving in five minutes.

Frustrated that he wouldn't have more time to investigate the odd family, he got on board the train and made his way to his compartment before he could be tempted to do anything stupid. Like trance that family on the platform in front of over a dozen different families and almost a hundred students and their parents.

The opportunity presented itself, however, when he discovered that the family, particularly the young girl, stood just outside the window to the compartment he'd chosen for himself, giving him a chance to further observe them. He couldn't really explain his sudden fascination with this rather loud and seemingly unremarkable family. Though the girl was cute as a button, and the older boys were interesting to observe from a psychological perspective, he didn't really have a reason to be spying on them like this.

No, actually that wasn't true, he realized with a sudden insight.

Seeing this family, as loud and filled with problems as it was, compared to every other family model Harry had witnessed prior to this, all the others fell short by a good mile or two. He felt like he was that little orphan boy looking into the window shop at Christmas time and seeing the ideal family, just beyond the glass.

Harry sat back in his seat with a heavy thud, suddenly depressed. As wonderful as his powers had been for him in making the Dursley's more tolerable and all around better people, he couldn't make them into the ideal family that he'd always wanted for himself. There was too much bad blood between them for something like that. Witnessing that redheaded family was like being shown his greatest desire only to have it taken away before he could even know what it was.

He snapped himself out of his funk when he hear the train whistle blow and he felt the engine start up.

A minute or two after they'd cleared the station, there was a knock on the cabin door. Curious, and not too concerned, Harry opened the door and was surprised to see the youngest brother of the redheaded family he'd been staring at earlier.

"Do you mind?" the eleven year old redhead asked mournfully. "Everywhere else is full up."

Frowning at the straightforward statement, especially since Harry had seen a number of unoccupied compartments earlier on, Harry decided that he didn't really want to spend the entire journey to Hogwarts in a compartment by himself. Besides, he might be able to get answers to some of the questions he had from him.

"Sure," he said.

The boy put his stuff up and then sat down next to the window. He glanced at Harry and then

looked quickly out of the window, pretending he hadn't looked. Harry couldn't help rolling his eyes a bit.

"Hey, Ron," the redheaded twins were back. "Listen, we're going down the middle of the train. Lee Jordan's got a giant tarantula down there."

"Right," mumbled Ron, seemingly not surprised at being left on his own by the two of them.

"Oh, hello there," the twin on the right turned and said to Harry, then they both paused and did a double-take. "What's that?" said one of the twins suddenly, pointing at Harry's lightning scar.

"Blimey," said the other twin. "Are you...?"

"He is," said the first twin. "Aren't you?" he added to Harry.

"What?" said Harry.

"Harry Potter," chorused the twins.

"Oh, him," said Harry. "I mean, yes, I am."

The two boys gawked at him, and Harry felt himself turning red, but thankfully they were distracted by some commotion from outside and remembered the tarantula. They glanced back and forth for a second, and then turned back to Harry and with a comedic flourish, they bowed at the waist and said together, "Pleased to meet you!" and then they interlocked their arms and exited the cabin.

Once the door had slammed shut, Harry turned warily towards Ron and asked, "They always like that?"

"Always," he nodded fervently.

"Are you really Harry Potter?" Ron blurted out.

Harry just nodded, fighting to hide the smile threatening to spill out. So much for not being popular.

"Oh well, I thought it might be one of Fred and George's jokes," said Ron. "And have you really got, you know..." He pointed at Harry's forehead.

Harry rolled his eyes again, but decided to go ahead and show the lightning scar. Ron stared. "So that's where You-Know-Who..."

"Yes," said Harry, "but I can't remember it."

"Nothing?" said Ron eagerly.

"Well," he told him, thinking back, "I remember a lot of green light, but nothing else."

"Wow," said Ron. He sat and stared at Harry for a few moments, then, as though he had suddenly realized what he was doing, he looked quickly out of the window again.

"So, the twins, they're Fred and George? They like jokes?"

Ron nodded, looking more than a little nervous.

"Are all your family wizards?" asked Harry, curious despite himself..

"Er, yes, I think so," said Ron. "I think Mom's got a second cousin who's an accountant, but we never talk about him."

"So you must know loads of magic already," Harry observed, looking for some more insight into what he had to look forward to for the next seven years of his life.

"I heard you went to live with Muggles," said Ron, dodging the unasked question. "What are they like?"

"Horrible," was the immediate response. "Well, not all of them. Not any more at any rate. My aunt and uncle and cousin have recently experienced a life change. Wish I'd had three wizard brothers instead. Even practical jokers like the twins."

"Five," Ron corrected automatically. For some reason, he was looking gloomy. "I'm the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I've got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left; Bill was Head Boy and Charlie was Captain of the Quidditch team. Now Percy's a prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they're really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it's no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I've got Bill's old robes, Charlie's old wand, and Percy's old rat."

"Rat?" Harry repeated. In reply, Ron reached inside his jacket and pulled out a fat gray rat, which was apparently asleep at the moment.

"His name's Scabbers and he's useless, he hardly ever wakes up. Percy got an owl from my dad for being made a prefect, but they couldn't aff... uh, I mean, I got Scabbers instead."

Ron's ears went pink. He seemed to think he'd said too much, because he went back to staring out of the window. The reason was all too obvious that he was embarrassed over not being able to afford an owl as a pet. Considering Hedwig was Harry first _friend_, let alone pet, he couldn't find much to say about being rich. If anything, he was used to being dirt poor himself, getting nothing but Dudley's old clothes, and never any toys or money for himself until very recently.

After another minute of uncomfortable silence, Harry was getting irritated, having been spoiled with the last month of having the Dursley's as hypno-servants. "Look, Ron, I'm not going to spontaneously disappear or start waving around my wand to defeat unseen foes. I'm just a normal kid that's had his world turned upside down going off to school. A magic school."

"Yeah," Ron acknowledged, his eyes still going back and forth between Harry's scar and the window.

"Look," Harry finally lost all patience, "What if some giant person came to you one day out of the blue and told you that you were going to be enrolled in the greatest _muggle_ school in all England?"

Ron's eyes snapped to Harry's and went wide.

"Exactly," Harry shrugged. "Until a month ago, I didn't even know magic existed, now I'm headed off to the best school in the world for it. And would you please stop staring."

"Sorry," Ron mumbled, trying unsuccessfully to stop staring at Harry's forehead.

"Oh, that does it," he snapped and leaned forward, staring right into the redhead's eyes. "LIME 1."

Ron only saw the green spiral at the center of the other boy's eyes. Where there should have been emerald green pupils, there were instead neon green spirals, moving ever so softly, gently, pulling him in, pulling him down...

Harry could tell the second Ron finally went under and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Now then," he said, noticing that they'd already exited London at this point, "let's get some answers."

There was a knock on the door of the compartment and the round-faced boy Harry had passed on platform 9 ¾ came in. He looked tearful. "Sorry," he said, "but have you seen a toad at all? Uh... is he OK?"

"LIME 1," Harry said in reply, staring straight into the boy's face. Once the boy was tranced, he ordered, "Sit down." The boy say. "What's your name?"

"Neville Longbottom."

"Ron Weasley."

Harry rolled his eyes and really wanted to smack the living daylights out of this walking contradiction.

Just as he was about to start asking them some more questions though, the door slid open once more, without a knock this time. "Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one," she said. She had a bossy tone, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth. "Oh, Neville, there you are, I'd thought I'd... Neville?"

"Oh for crying out loud!" Harry exclaimed, and when the girl looked at him, he was already intoning, "LIME 1!" A minute later, she was sat beside Neville on the bench across from Harry. Before doing anything else, he got up and locked the compartment door.

"Now then," he sighed heavily. "Any more interruptions?"

There was a knock and a call for, "Anything from the cart, dears?"

Harry blinked and realized he was getting somewhat hungry, and probably so were the rest of his guests. He quickly opened the door back up and then bought ten of everything available. Only cost him three galleons too. After bringing in all the food, he locked the door back and took a minute to relax while the three hypnotized children sat motionless across from him, staring blankly into nothing.

"OK," he finally sat up, ready to get to business. "Ron, Neville, stay quiet for a bit please. What is your name?" he asked the girl.

"Hermione Granger," she answered dully.

Harry was surprised when he saw an emotion flicker through her eyes briefly as she answered. It was too brief to properly identify, but he saw it nevertheless.

"Hermione, do you know what is happening?" he asked, careful of waking her too soon. It had happened to him before, with the neighbors, but thankfully he had fast ways of putting them back in trance.

"Yes," she answered, once more with a brief flicker of raw emotion in her eyes.

"What do you think is happening?" Harry questioned in a soothing tone.

"You've hypnotized us," was the straightforward and emotionless reply.

Harry grinned. He had a feeling he'd like this girl. "You're a very intelligent girl, Hermione."

She blushed and there was a trace of a smile on her face as she said, "Yes, I am."

Harry raised an eyebrow in interest, then began to focus his power into his hand, then he pulled out a very unique item from his jacket pocket. It was simple string and paperboard, save than the paperboard had the stereotypical black and white hypno-spiral on it, and the string held it at about a foots length. He held the string in his hand and raised the spiral so it was right in front of Hermione's face, so she couldn't help but look at it. Then he channeled his 'power' down through the string and out the spiral. Hermione was instantly entranced.

Harry didn't have a name for this particular skill, and it had taken him a while to read enough to start using it in the first place. It's easy enough to put people in trance and hypnotize them so they're relaxed, responsive, and suggestible. On the other hand, it's very difficult to keep them there without reinforcement of the trance. Usually this is done with a simple object, like the stereotypical pocket watch, spiral, crystals and everything else associated with hypnotism. If you do the initial trance with the object that just makes it easier to maintain or deepen the trance. Harry, on the other hand, didn't really need such things for the initial trance, but they did help in deepening his hold on people that would normally be able to wake up on their own. He'd discovered shortly after he started using these trance tools that he could sometimes channel his power through it, and that would enhance the effects and make it all but impossible for the person to snap out of it without him doing it for them. He'd constructed this 'spiral string' just for the ease of simplicity, but he hoped to come up with something more permanent one of these days.

"Hermione, you are an intelligent girl and a smart girl and a good girl. Good, smart, intelligent girls follow the rules, right? You like to follow the rules?" he spoke in a soothing voice that came natural to him.

"Yes," Hermione sighed, sounding relaxed and drowsy.

"Good, smart, intelligent girls also like to help people, isn't that right? You like to help people?"

"Yes," she nodded slightly, her dilated pupils focused on the green-glowing spiral in front of her.

"Can you raise your arm, Hermione? You can raise your arm, like its lighter than air, like a balloon was tied to your wrist and is helping you lift your arm up. Yes, you can raise your arm, like a good, smart, intelligent girl." As he spoke, her right arm slowly lifted up from her lap until she held it aloft at the same height he held his own arm.

"I need your help Hermione," he whispered. "This spiral must remain in the air where it is, but my arm is getting tired, so tired, so very tired. I need your help in holding it up. I need a good, smart, intelligent girl to help me hold this spiral up, because it needs to stay where it is. Will you help me, Hermione?"

"... Yes," she whispered back, barely moving her lips. He put the string against her hand, and it automatically clasped it. She gasped when the spiral swung away from her, but soon it was back where it had been, and she was the one holding it in front of her face.

"Thank you so much Hermione," Harry whispered to her softly. "You're helping me so much. Remember, the spiral must stay where it is. You need to watch it, and keep holding it. Because the spiral must stay where it is, so just hold onto it and watch it. Thank you, Hermione."

"You're... welcome," she sighed, and kept her eyes right on the spiral, unknowingly going deeper into the trance just from her obsessive compulsive nature in sticking to the rules.

Having Hermione sufficiently occupied now, Harry turned his attention to the other two in the compartment with him. Neville and Ron had just sat their quietly the entire time he'd been speaking with Hermione, eyes wide and staring at nothing. Smirking to himself, he finally addressed them.

"Neville, Ron," he said, "You both know who I am. I am Harry Potter. I want you both to do something for me. Will you do what I ask?"

"Yes, Harry," Ron robotically replied.

"Yes sir," said Neville in the same way.

Harry frowned at Neville's rather odd way of addressing him. He wasn't sure if he liked it or not. He focused his power into both of his hands this time, but did not take out any additional tools. Holding his hands, fingers splayed, in front of them, he spoke soothingly, "I want you to count down from five. With each number you speak, you feel more and more relaxed. Nothing troubles you, nothing can bother you, all your stress and fears just melt away. Begin." With each number they counted, he lowered one finger, continuing to guide them into a deeper trance, relaxing them further and talking them through the relaxation exercise until they reached zero. By this point, Harry had already identified the perfect way to further hypnotize each of them.

"Neville," he spoke quietly to the boy in the middle, "I'm going to help you find your toad, but I need you to listen to me very carefully. Whether you listen to me or not will be the difference in if we find your toad, or if he is lost forever, and you do want to find him, right?"

"Yes," Neville nodded, showing just how urgent the matter was to him.

"Good, then I can help you, and you do want me to help you, Neville," said Harry as he started snacking on some of the pasties. Ron started drooling.

"Neville, what is your toad's name?" Harry asked.

"Trevor," the round-faced boy answered.

"Trevor the toad," he laughed once. "Now Neville, you know I am Harry Potter, and Harry Potter has a power that nobody knows about. That's how he beat... You-Know-Who," he'd almost said the name of the Dark Lord who'd killed his parents, but he honestly couldn't remember the weird name at that moment, so he'd gone with what Hagrid had called him. It seemed to work. "I'm going to use my power to help you find Trevor, Neville. But I need you to do exactly what I say, all right?"

"All right," Neville gulped softly, but it was clear he was still under.

"Now, in your memories, I want you to remember what happened just as you opened the door to this compartment. Picture it so clearly in your mind it is like you're reliving the moment all over again. Do you have that picture in your mind?"

"Yes."

"Good, now, I'm going to use my powers to reverse time, just for you Neville. So we've gone back one full second. You are now in the hallway, looking for Trevor and you see the door you're about to open. Do you see that? It is now one second into the past."

"Yes, I... I see it, I'm... I..."

"Now I'm reversing time some more, second by second, Neville. Nothing bad is happening, I am just using my power as the Boy Who Lived to help you find Trevor. Now, second by second, time is reversing, you're walking backwards down the hall, and..." Harry let him fill in the blanks.

"I'm... asking for help from, the Prefects, but they're going to their meeting. Now I'm getting laughed at by some girls down the hall. Now I'm asking them for help in finding my toad. Now I'm running down the hall. I'm running out of my compartment. I'm frantically searching all over my compartment for Trevor, but I can't find him. He's not anywhere, I—"

"Stop," Harry interrupted him. "I've stopped time, just for you Neville. Time itself has stopped, and nothing is moving, nothing is wrong. You're still safe, I am still helping you Neville. Now, at this very moment in time, I'm going to unfreeze only you, while everything else is still frozen and unmoving. There, you are now unfrozen, while time is stopped around you."

Harry waited, and grinned when Neville, eye's glazed and half-closed lit up with amazement and he mumbled an awed, "Wow!"

"Now Neville, what I need you to do is look at the floor. Do you see Trevor there?"

"No."

"Now look on the seats. Calmly, slowly, patiently. Remember, time has stopped. Only you are moving. Do you see Trevor on the seats? Or under them?"

Neville breathed deeply and actually relaxed a bit more before answering. "No. He's not here."

"Calm, Neville. I'm helping you. Look up. Do you see the luggage racks?"

"Yeah. My trunk is there. And Trevor's box."

Harry sighed and rolled his eyes. "Think back Neville, think back and remember. Did you, at any point since you got to the train station, open Trevor's box? If you want me to, I'll reverse time again so we can check and make sure. Think Neville."

"I... I did. I wanted to make sure he was still there after Gran found him for me on the Platform."

"Did you let him out then, or did you leave him there?"

"I left him there, and then I put the box next to my trunk. But I..."

"But what Neville?" he prompted soothingly.

"I don't think I secured the lid, I think he got out!" Neville started breathing faster.

"Time is still stopped, Neville. We're back at the moment just _after_ you put Trevor's box next to your trunk. Time is stopped at that moment. You are frozen in time, because this is a new moment in time, a different moment where I have stopped time. I am helping you Neville, I have stopped time and nothing is happening at all. Trevor is still in the box, because you left him there, It's only the moment after you put the box away, and time is stopped." Finally he got the round-faced boy breathing easier once again.

"Now, I'm going to help you again Neville, I am going to unfreeze you again, while time remains stopped. Only you will be able to move, while everything around you is frozen. There, you are now able to move. What I want you to do, Neville, is go to the luggage rack, and look, just look, don't touch just look at Trevor's box and tell me what you see."

"I see..." he hesitated, and then calmly answered, "I see that the corner on the box is cracked open. I can see Trevor inside. He's looking right at me."

While all this was going on, Harry was snacking on pasties and jelly beans and other sugary treats. He had also become well aware of a low-throat chirping coming from the pants in Neville's robes. Right about the time that Neville reminded himself that he _hadn't_ secured the box lid, the aforementioned Trevor the toad himself peaked his head out from the pocket.

Annoyed at the toad sounds, and half afraid that they might wake up the entranced children, Harry focused his power for an H. Illusion, and then unleashed it in the toad's direction. The fact that Ron's rat Scabbers had woken up by this point and was staring at Harry wide-eyed was inconsequential, so he just adjusted where the green-spiral energy went and caught both of them in the same compulsion to be quiet and not move. Unfortunately, as in the case with Hedwig, Trevor completely ignored him and kept croaking away.

Oddly though, and Harry hoped it was a sign his powers were evolving, Scabbers immediately froze and what little sounds he'd been making ceased at once. His beady eyes also seemed to glaze over and stare into space, where before they had definitely been focused on Harry. Since Trevor hadn't been affected though, Harry chalked it up to a fluke and ignored the rat after that point.

"Neville," said Harry soothingly, "I'm going to unfreeze time now, but don't worry about a thing. Because while you're still sitting there, worried about Trevor, I'm going to use my powers to help you again. Time is going to speed up, except for one single moment of it, until you're back in the present with me in my compartment. That single moment is the moment when Trevor escapes his box. The moment that happens, I'm going to use my powers to help you by catching Trevor the moment he leaves the box, and I'm going to put him in your left pocket. Time is speeding up now, you're moving forward through time, until you open the door to my compartment and you look into my eyes."

"Look... Into... Your... Eyes..." Neville sighed each word and fell into an even deeper trance.

"Very good Neville, very good. Now that I've helped you, I need you to help me, do you understand?"

"Sure... thing... Harry..." Neville smiled sleepily, but remained sitting up.

"Very good. I would like for us to be friends Neville," Harry told him honestly. After all, it wasn't every day that he got such an easy subject. And there was just something about the boy that he couldn't help but like.

Neville smiled further and replied, "I'd... like... that... too..."

"And friends do things for each other. I've helped you find Trevor, so now you help me, isn't that right?"

"Right..."

"That is right. What I need for you to do now Neville is focus on something for me. In your mind, I want you to imagine a tall tower. Right now, you are on the platform just above the roof of the tower. There is something incredibly important inside that tower that I need you to do for me Neville. Will you go into the tower for me? Please?"

"Sure thing... Harry..." Neville smiled, his eyes half-closed and sleepy.

"This tower leads to your subconscious mind, Neville. At the very bottom of this tower is a place of pure peace and tranquility. There is... a door there, in that place. Right now, I am giving you a magic key. A key that will let me open that door any time that I want to. But I can't enter the tower, Neville, only you can. Hold onto the key that I'm giving you, and when you enter the tower, you'll find yourself at the top of an immense staircase, going down the incredibly tall tower. This is a magic tower Neville, because with each and every step that you take down these stairs, you relax more and more, going deeper and deeper into your mind, deeper and deeper, relaxing more and letting go of all the tension and stress in your body and mind. Only you can go down these stairs Neville. Will you go? Will you enter the tower? Will you take my key to the door at the bottom of the tower, in the place of peace and tranquility?"

"... Yes," Neville spoke with more confidence all of a sudden, before he seemed to relax in a different way than before.

"Thank you Neville," Harry grinned, "You'll still be able to hear my voice, and so it will be like I'm right there behind you. You have to lead the way though. Take us down the stairs, relaxing more and more with each step, moving deeper and deeper into your mind. I will follow along, so let me know when you finally get to the door at the bottom of the magic tower."

"All right Harry," Neville said, his eyes closing and with each passing second he relaxed more and more.

"Ron," Harry shifted his attention, "Do you want this food?"

"Yes!" the robotic voice sounded both dull and excited at once.

"It's nice to eat good food, isn't it Ron?"

"Yes!"

"Will you answer all my questions, no matter what they are, if I let you eat my food Ron?"

"I will answer all your questions," he robotically replied.

Harry smirked and handed him a 'Chocolate Frog' and said, "You'll do everything I say if I give you this food, won't you Ron?"

"I'll do everything you say," his eyes latched onto the frog, and oddly enough the card that came with it.

"Yes, you will," Harry gave him the chocolate treat and kept handing him more when he'd devoured what he started with, adding more and more things that Ron would do in exchange for the treats. Ten minutes and half the food and all of the 'Every-Flavor-Beans' later, Ron was as much his loving sycophant as Dudley was, with less than half the energy and effort too.

Unfortunately, while delayed, it seemed that fate had one more interruption for Harry to overcome. Thankfully all three of his... subjects? Friends? Cabin mates? Well, whatever, all three of them were in deep trances and would not be easily awoken. So when the knock at the door came, Harry wasn't exactly worried about them waking themselves up at the noise.

He _was_ worried that whoever was there would recognize what he'd done and tell other people about it. The last thing Harry wanted was people telling him what he could and couldn't do with his own powers. He realized with sudden clarity that unless he wanted to stop using his hypno-powers entirely, he'd have to figure out some way of making it so that if he were ever caught using them, he could get away with it scott-free. Which meant he'd actually have to hypnotize the entire school, staff and students alike, just to make sure that he wouldn't get in trouble with anybody, and if he did, so that he could get out of it just as easy.

For the moment though, he had a much more urgent crisis.

As soon as he unlocked the door, it slammed open and Harry vaguely remembered the pale blonde boy trying to crowd his way into the compartment, from the clothing store on Diagon Alley from the day Hagrid had taken him shopping. Emphasis on the word try.

Despite the two brutish looking thugs standing behind him, the pale boy made no progress into the room as Harry was standing nose to nose with him, forcing the intruder to back away less they slam into one another.

"Hello," Harry said pleasantly as the three bullies backed into the hallway. "Can I help you?"

"Is it true?" the boy demanded. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"

Harry just smiled neutrally and answered simply, "Yes."

He glanced past the blonde haired bully to the two mean-looking thickset 11-year-olds behind him.

"Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle," said the pale boy carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking. "And my name's Malfoy, Draco Malfoy."

Unsure on how to respond to this sudden introduction, since he'd already confirmed his own identity, he just stared at the now identified Draco Malfoy. He was sorely tempted to zap them right then and there, but he couldn't be certain on how clear the hallway was at that moment.

"Well," Draco finally broke the uneasy silence when Harry just kept staring at him, "Care to invite me in? It is only polite after all, in proper circles. You'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there." He offered Harry his hand.

Screw security.

"LIME 3," Harry smiled and stared as all three oafs in front of him went slack-jawed and dull-eyed.

"Now listen hear you pompous bottom feeding windbag," Harry hissed into the entranced boy's face. "I don't care who you are, what you are, what you can do to me, or what you can have others do to me. The next time you see me, you will be filled with a terror the likes of which you can only imagine. That goes for all three of you. Whenever I snap my fingers at you, you will be filled with this unnamed terror, it will consume you, mind, body, and soul and the only way to make it stop is to run screaming from my presence. When you wake up, you will not remember this conversation, you will not remember ever finding me, you could not find me on the train at all. And just so you don't forget the terror that will fill you when I snap my fingers, here is a demonstration."

Harry had been powering the strongest H. Illusion he'd yet fashioned, focusing intensely on making the three in front of him scream in unbridled terror and fear. He held up _both _hands and watched as the neon green spirals worked their magic on the minds of the three boys. Exactly two seconds later, they all started screaming like the boogie man was after them. Malfoy slapped his cheeks with both hands and ran screaming down the hallway to the end of the train. Crabbe and Goyle, also screaming, slammed into one another, fell down, got back up, and ran screaming after Malfoy.

Struggling not to laugh, Harry just turned back into his compartment and then closed and locked the door. Thankfully, this time it remained closed until the train finally arrived at it's destination; Hogsmeade Station, the village just outside of and nearest to Hogwarts.

_Hogwarts_

_Great Hall_

_Sunday, September 1_

Harry was practically beating himself bloody with frustration and self-loathing as he walked down between the long tables in single-file with the rest of the First Years. Boat ride aside, which was unnerving given how he couldn't swim, but thankfully it was short, Harry had spent the time from the train station to this moment trying to figure out _how_ he was going to hypnotize the whole school so he could use his powers without having to worry about being caught. He'd had the perfect opportunity not five minutes ago, when Professor McGonagall, a stern looking witch with raven black hair and sparkling green robes, took them all to a side-room for a few minutes. He'd been alone with everyone in his age group for several minutes, and he'd just stood there, doing nothing, worrying that someone might come in at the wrong second.

Looking back on it though, Harry had to admit that it was good that he had hesitated, because right when he'd been just about to do it, a dozen _ghosts_ had floated in, apparently on their way to the Great Hall for the Sorting Ceremony. If he'd been caught hypnotizing a bunch of school children right then, he'd have been in real trouble, he was sure of it.

Still, it was extremely frustrating, so much so that Harry was unconsciously tapping into his cursed powers, which were building up in response to his stress. By the time all the new students were lined up at the front, staring out at the intimidating faces and stares of their soon-to-be peers, Harry's hands had begun to glow an iridescent neon green. He kept his fists clenched and in his pockets, though after he'd noticed the glow in the first place.

Then, the lady professor pulled out a three-legged stool and an old, moldy, patchwork hat that looked as old as the castle itself. Everyone stared expectantly at the hat, and Harry added confusion to his mounting frustration. Then the hat opened up a tear in the middle and began to sing. After the song, where the other students were feeling relief, having been worried over some kind of test, Harry felt differently.

This thing, this Sorting Hat would be put on their heads and see into their minds. Harry felt with one hundred percent certainty that the moment that hat was on his head, his secret would be out. The _one_ good thing in his life, other than getting away from the Dursley's, had been getting these powers, and while he didn't know much about the magical world, the fact that there was a fruit vendor giving out powers like these meant they had to be regulated in some way, which meant that there was a way to strip him of his powers, or just as bad, make it so everyone that knew what he could do, immune.

The frustration, fear, confusion, and sheer panic bottled itself up in Harry's mind so much that his powers automatically came to the fore to 'help him', but he wasn't using them, just holding them back, fear making him think that if anybody saw him use his powers would find him out instantly. It continued to build and build and build in him so much that he felt like he was about to burst. In reaction to this, the neon green glow around his hands spread, slowly at first, until that moment when it all came flooding out and he was covered by the same energy that he used to ensnare minds and dull senses.

The next thing he knew though was a sudden _release_ and all around him, he saw some kind of... _ripple_ shoot out from him in all directions. From an outside perspective, best seen from the ceiling, it looked like another of the neon green hypno spirals shooting out with Harry at the exact center. It only lasted for a second, but the effects were obvious all the same.

Professor McGonagall had been about to start reading off a list in her hands, for the students to start coming forward and trying on the hats, but all of a sudden, she went glassy-eyed and her arms went to her side. She wasn't the only one either.

Harry blinked and stared, and then looked all around. Behind him, all the Professors were in their seats, staring off into space, glassy-eyed and breathing softly. The students at the tables, likewise, remained in their seats, staring blankly towards the front. On both sides of him, all his fellow First Years were standing absolutely still, where before they'd been fidgeting non-stop.

He stepped out of line and walked towards the Hat and Professor. No one reacted to him at all.

Harry grinned and almost cheered out loud. He didn't though. This was a rare opportunity, he was sure of it. If he didn't take advantage, or if he screwed this up, the consequences would be dire. Taking a deep, calming breath, he took a second to think about what had just happened.

He'd used his powers, obviously, but in a way and at a level of strength that he hadn't used before.

It started with him feeling frustrated, and while he'd felt his powers reacting, he'd ignored it, trying to bottle them all away. That's about when he'd noticed his hands glowing with the restrained power and shoved them in his pockets. Then he just kept getting more and more emotional, and while he'd been ignoring it, he did remember how his powers had reacted to his fear and restraint. He'd built up so much power that it filled his entire body until it had overloaded and practically exploded out of him.

That's what the ripple was, he realized. His power 'exploding' out of him in all directions. Putting everybody in it's range, which he couldn't begin to guess at, into a trance. He smirked and immediately decided to dub this new ability his _Trance Ripple_.

Before he did anything else though, he needed to be sure this wasn't temporary. It had happened to him before where he'd put somebody in a light trance and they'd snapped out of it on their own at the slightest distraction. He needed to deepen the trance before implanting any trance triggers.

Taking another deep breath, Harry closed his eyes and called forth his power, but he didn't use it immediately. Instead, he kept calling for more and more and more until he felt like he was filled with it. All of a sudden, he understood how he could use this any time he wanted to, without having to get so emotional about it either. Grinning wildly, Harry whispered to himself, while unleashing his power all at once, "_Trance Ripple_."

Another spiral rippled out from his body and everyone in the Great Hall let out a collective sigh as they relaxed even deeper than before. Those standing, thankfully remained standing.

"Now then," Harry said out loud, "Can everybody hear me?"

He wasn't surprised when they all, as one, answered, "Yes." What did surprise him was how the Sorting Hat was among those that spoke.

"Good, very good. I want you all to take some time to remember what you are feeling right now. You are very relaxed, nothing at all is troubling you, all the cares and worries that bog you down just float away from you. Can you feel that peace and relaxation?"

There were mixed responses, but overall it was positive that yes, even the Hat could feel the peace and relaxation. Another few general questions to deepen the trance and reinforce how nice and relaxing being in trance was, and then they were all ready for the trance trigger, a post-hypnotic suggestion that would immediately put them back into this relaxed state of suggestibility.

"Now I want you all to listen to me very carefully," he spoke as loudly and as clearly as he could without shouting. "Whenever you hear me, and _only_ me, say the words; _Harry Potter's Saimin Says,_ you will instantly return to this state of relaxation and peace. Remember, only when I, and only I say _Harry Potter's Saimin Says_, you will fall back into this trance state and feel incredibly relaxed and at peace. Every time you hear me say _Harry Potter's Saimin Says_, you will fall into a deeper trance, a deeper, more peaceful state of relaxation. Each time falling deeper, and deeper, and deeper. While in this state, you hear only my voice, feel only my voice, smell only my voice, taste only my voice, see only my voice. My voice is the only thing you are aware of while in this state of relaxation."

Harry grinned and couldn't help himself when he thought of the fruit that had given him his power. The Saimin Saimin no Mi, it had been called. Translated into English, it was the Hypno Hypno Fruit, but he loved the irony at the old children's game and the source of his new power that he just couldn't help himself. Speaking of which...

"Also," he addressed the Great Hall once more, "Anytime I say the words _Saimin Says_, whatever command or phrase that I say after that, you will follow exactly. _Saimin Says: Stand Up_."

Instantly everyone that was seated were on their feet, and the ones already standing looked like they were standing at attention now.

"Sit down," he said. Nobody moved. He grinned and said, "_Saimin Says: Sit Down_."

Instantly everyone in the Hall were sat on their buts, the people at the tables on the benches, the Professors in their seats, and the First Years and Professor McGonagall on the stone floor. Harry had to struggle not to laugh out loud after that.

"First Years, _Saimin Says: Stand Up_. Professor McGonagall, _Saimin Says: Stand Up_," he ordered.

He then said to everyone, "As I count from ten to one, you will begin to awaken, not remembering any of this, thinking that you merely let your mind wander and that no time has passed at all since the Sorting Hat finished its song. As I reach the number one, you will put yourselves back to the way you were before entering the trance, forgetting all that has happened in the past few minutes, and believing you just let your mind wander. Ten, Nine, Eight," Harry put himself back in line as he continued to count, and quietly observed how everyone around him was very becoming more and more alert and aware as he continued to count. "One, Wide Awake!" he shouted and then shut up. After a few seconds, everyone seemed to collectively shake their heads and Professor McGonagall cleared her throat before holding up the list and began to read off names.

Harry made sure to pay close attention to each person's name and which House they were sorted into. Hufflepuff had the first two of the term, and looked to be a mishmash of warm and friendly faces, in fact nothing truly remarkable stood out from the Hufflepuff table at all. Ravenclaw got a couple, and Harry recognized the 'intellectuals' almost immediately. He figured Hermione would be going there, but he was surprised when instead she went to Gryffindor. Speaking of which, Gryffindor had the more... cool crowd among its peers, if Harry was anything to judge by. Besides the prankster twins, he saw a number of bold, attractive, and confident faces staring out at him. Slytherin though, unpleasant lot didn't begin to describe the harsh, cold, unfeeling stares that glared out at the rest of the Hall from that table. He'd have to see what he could do about that.

Finally it was his turn, and so he walked up to the stool much calmer than he normally might have. Even amongst all the whispers and pointing and staring. After all, he knew something the rest of them didn't. The moment the Hat was on his head, he thought as loudly as possible, "_Harry Potter's Saimin Says_."

The Hat seemed to go loose on his head all of a sudden, almost sliding past his nose.

"Tell me everything you can about the four Houses," Harry whispered/thought at the Hat.

Instantly, the second the last syllable was completed, Harry received more information than he'd been counting on. If anything it was more like a mind-dump than just the information. After about three or more minutes, not that Harry could have kept track of time during all this, it finished and the Boy Who Hypnotized knew more about the school, Wizarding World, History, and the four Houses than anybody in the world. The Hat's idea of 'everything' seemed to be the knowledge and memories of everyone it had ever Sorted, as well as the reasons why it had sent them where it did, and complete data on the layout of each of the Common Rooms, dormitories, passwords, hidden passages, secret rooms, and ward keys that the Hat had access to.

Harry grinned and decided to take advantage of this while he could, and whispered/thought, "Tell me everything there is to know about Hogwarts." Ten minutes later, Harry really wish he'd just asked for everything that the Hat knew, because the way he'd phrased it, he now had a data dump being put inside his head from the minds of every single Headmaster, teacher, student, painting, ghost, and even visitors that Hogwarts had ever had inside its wards, and the Hat, of course, was connected to those wards and had easy access. A total of fifteen minutes later, over eighteen that he'd been on the stool with the Hat on his head, Harry had a headache worthy of a migraine.

"Uh... Gryffindor," Harry thought/whispered at it, and woke the Hat up. A second or two later, it finally screamed out, as it had with others, "GRYFFINDOR!"

He unsteadily got off the stool and stumbled over to the cheering table. He slammed his head down on the cool wooden table the moment he was seated and didn't look up again until the scent of food hit his nostrils. He was too hungry to let some headache stop him from eating, but he pretty much ignored everything and everyone else around him in favor of the meal. He thought he felt the headache spike a bit, originating somewhere around his scar, but he just sent some of his power out in response and it seemed to quiet down for a while after that.

After that, they were mercifully lead up to their beds and Harry didn't even bother listening to Percy's speech as they walked through the halls. As they passed the Poltergeist, Harry just said two words, while unconsciously casting an H. Illusion on it that sent the specter speeding off, crying, actually crying! The rest of the group, and Percy himself, were all very impressed by this. Harry himself didn't even notice, just focused on getting to bed. When he finally crawled into the four poster cloud of heaven, he didn't bother taking off his clothes or shoes, he just fell onto the comforter and was asleep the second his head touched the pillow.

He had weird dreams the whole night, like he was living through a thousand years of history in a single night from every possible perspective, but at least when he woke up in the morning his headache was gone.

To Be Continued...

AN: It has come to my attention recently that there could be a lot of fun had with this story, if put into the proper light. Ergo I put forth this challenge: What kind of Post Hypnotic Suggestions, both the action and the phrases used to trigger them, should Harry come up with and use? I understand this can lead to a lot of Weasley, Snape, and Dumbledore bashing, so all I ask is that for every one of those, I ask you to come up with a different one for someone that is not Dumbledore, Snape, or Ron Weasley. Those are most definitely still allowed, I just want _more_ than *_just_* them. Please and Thank You!

I would ask that most of these be sent via 'Review' so that we all can enjoy the hilarity and make more suggestions based off one another. The ones that are actually used will be duly thanked in the chapter in which their "PHS" is used. Thanks For Reading, And PLEASE Review!


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter Two:

_Hogwarts_

_Gryffindor Tower_

Harry's first week of school at Hogwarts was interesting, to say the least.

To start with, everywhere he went, without fail, everyone would point and stare at him. Not in a mocking way, if anything it was more awe and a bit of celebrity worship. For the most part though, it was just annoying and he wished they would quit it.

Secondly, even though he'd never been to Hogwarts before, the teachers still expected all of the First Years to make it to all of their classes on time, when they did not even hand out a map. To make this issue worse, Hogwarts itself liked to change things up on its students. He could list every single thing that he found weird or just plain wrong about all the ways one could get lost amidst these halls, but he only had one lifetime and he didn't want to waste it. For Harry though, even without a map, he seemed to instinctively know where to go and the fastest, most efficient way of getting there, and whats more is that whenever Hogwarts _did_ change things up on everyone, he knew about it beforehand and adjusted his course appropriately. Ron and Neville found it to be both weird and awesome about him.

Next, the ghosts, while cool in more than just one way, were just as much an annoyance as the unwanted stares. Particularly after he tried to hypnotize one, just to see what would happen. For the amount of power he put into the zaps, the most he expected was a light trance where he could get them to act funny or answer questions truthfully. Instead, what he got was a level of hypnotism so deep that it was comparable to when he used Brainwash on Uncle Vernon and Dudley. Thankfully, it wore off just as soon as he snapped them out of it, but the information was useful and interesting all on its own.

Worse than the ghosts, by and far, was the Caretaker, Argus Filch. Him and his cat, who he called Mrs. Norris, always managed to show up at the wrong time in the right place to catch students bending the rules in some way. The one time Harry got turned around and almost went into the Third Floor Corridor that had been forbidden for the year (purely as a means of a shortcut to Transfiguration class), the old man and cat showed up in seconds and accused him of trying to break the rules and threatening detention and expulsion. Harry'd finally had enough and triggered the man with the general trance trigger he'd given the whole school. The cat kept meowing and pestering him, so he couldn't establish the level of controls he'd wanted to in such a troublesome person, but he managed to put in an aversion reflex, so that any time he got close to Harry, the Caretaker would want to get away from him, the sooner the better.

Finally, there were the classes themselves. Despite having read through most of his school books ahead of time, it was still a sobering experience to learn just how much there was to magic. It wasn't all wand-waving and spell-casting. There was real work to it and the classes reflected that.

There were three blocks to each day, and each day had its own classes to fill those blocks, which were either relatively short two hour classes, or double-backed four hour periods dedicated to a single class. The morning block was usually two separate classes on Tuesday and Thursday, and then a double-class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The afternoon block was usually two or three classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and then another double-class on Tuesday and Thursday. Wednesday was, thankfully, the only time they had a night class that started just before midnight and went until two in the morning, but it was Astronomy class, so it was understandable. Harry was just thankful they put that in the middle of the week instead of the start or end.

The third block was the late afternoon/evening block and thankfully that was free time, which was supposed to be used for studying and homework, and then dinner, lights out, except on Wednesdays, at 12:30 on the dot. Any time in between the blocks were breaks for Breakfast, Lunch and an occasional free period that became rarer the higher your Year.

For his First Year at Hogwarts, Harry had Charms in the afternoon block on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, followed by Herbology on the same days. Thankfully History of Magic was only in the mornings right before Lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays, preceded by Defense Against The Dark Arts. On Tuesday afternoon, they had Double-Transfiguration, and on Thursday afternoon they had Double-Charms. On Monday morning, they had a Double-Herbology class, on Wednesday a Double-Defense class, and on Friday Double-Potions.

At least that was the first weeks schedule. Apparently the single classes on Mondays and Wednesdays switched out between Charms and Herbology the first week, and then Transfiguration and Potions the next week, and then switching back and forth between them on alternating weeks until the end of term. It was very confusing and took him some time to get used to the odd schedule, but first he had to get through the week.

Monday morning, which just so happened to be September 2 and Harry's first day of school, Harry woke at around 7 in the morning, and though he wanted to sleep later, there was someone knocking at the door to their room, which turned out to be the red-haired Prefect, Percy Weasley making sure the First Year boys, his younger brother in particular, were awake and ready for breakfast, which ended at 9:30. At the word 'breakfast' Ron immediately woke and looked around, mumbling things that no one really understood, and was glad of it.

Showering and dressing was simple thanks to a bathroom suite attached directly to their room and they each had their own stall and sink and everything. The First Years, boys and girls, stuck close to the Prefects who once again showed them around, this time from Gryffindor tower _to_ the Great Hall. Breakfast was already laid out on the tables by the time they got there and all they had to do was grab whatever they wanted on the plate set for them. While they ate, the Heads of House, (Professor McGonagall for Gryffindor, Professor Flitwick for Ravenclaw, Professor Sprout for Hufflepuff, and Professor Snape for Slytherin), came and distributed class schedules for everyone.

Fifteen minutes later, as classes started right at 10 AM on the dot, Harry was racing from the Tower to the Greenhouses where Professor Sprout taught Herbology. Thankfully, being the first class and all, there wasn't any need to test out his dragon-hide gloves just yet, in fact it was mostly theory and introductory work.

They went to Lunch at 12 noon, and then to Professor Flitwick's classroom for their first Charms class. It was kind of funny, particularly when the diminutive wizard reached Harry's name on the roll call and nearly fell off the stool he had to stand on to reach his podium. Once again it was mostly an introductory class.

For the most part, things were very laid back that first day. Ron and Neville kept trying to talk to Harry, learn more things about him, but Harry himself was more interested in observing the lessons and in particular the professors teaching them. He made sure to stay after class to "get some help with homework" for a few minutes, during which he happened to test the trance trigger he'd established the night of the Sorting. He took the time to reinforce those commands and lay a couple new ones in each of them. Nothing too elaborate, just simple stuff, such as it was OK for him to be late with homework and that they'd never take points off of him or call on him in class at all. He never really liked being the center of attention anyway.

Unless something drastic changed, he planned on leaving similar 'suggestions' with all of his teachers, and not just them, but all of the staff, as all of the staff had the power to take points away, and he didn't want that kind of thing to happen. The rest was just to relieve his own stress and worry.

Other than that, nothing in particular really happened for the first day, except maybe after classes were over and Ron tried to get him to play Wizards Chess. Harry declined and offered up Neville, after maybe giving some suggestions to the shy boy that he loved Chess as much as Ron did. Harry did the little homework he'd been assigned instead, and read ahead through the textbooks to see what they would be covering next, and also to prepare himself for the rest of the classes for the week.

In fact the whole week was rather routine, despite all the new experiences and classes, it was the same as any other school. If that school were in a haunted fun house of a castle that taught magic instead of the normal curriculum. Until that Friday, and several things happened that changed everything.

_Hogwarts_

_Friday, September 6_

The morning started off normally. Harry woke up in his four-poster bed, hypnotized each of his roommates, asked them some questions, made them do silly stuff to give him a laugh, and reinforced all of the P.H.S. he'd given them before making them forget the whole thing, blaming it on being too tired before breakfast and then going down with them to the Great Hall for breakfast. The only major difference in routine being that this Friday morning, Hedwig swooped in with a note, scribbled on a torn piece of parchment, while he was eating his bacon.

It turned out the note was from Hagrid, inviting him to afternoon tea after all his classes were over with. He sent back a reply, after Hedwig had demolished half of Gryffindor table's supply of bacon (Ron arguably got the other half), and then went off to Double Potions, scheduled with the Slytherin First Years in the Dungeon Potions classroom labs.

The whole place was dank, cold, and absolutely no sunlight reached the room, not to mention the whole place smelled. Exactly _what_ it smelled like, he wouldn't hazard a guess, but it was not pleasant to say the least.

The moment all the students were seated, the door at the back of the classroom slammed open and Professor Snape stormed in, cloak and black robes swirling about him with a dramatic flare. He probably meant it to be intimidating, but Harry (and most of the students there) thought it was a bit showy and made him look like a bat fluttering its wings.

"There will be no foolish wand-waving or inane questions in this class," the pale, greasy-haired man stated with a finality that sent chills up and down the preteens backs. "You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. Undoubtedly, many of you will hardly believe this is magic due to the amount of effort that must be placed into this subject. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death; if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

Harry frowned, his irritation growing with every word from this... man's mouth. Thankfully, after this short, yet revealing introduction, he turned back to the business of teaching the class and began to take the roll call. When he finally got to Harry's name, he paused and almost sneered as he said, "Ah yes, Harry Potter. Our new... celebrity."

The way it was said, and how some of the Slytherins laughed afterwards made Harry just that much more annoyed, but he held his tongue. He didn't want to risk exposure carelessly, and besides, if this... person hated him as much as he was acting, hypnotizing him would do little good in the long run as Harry would never be able to gain the necessary trust to implant powerful enough suggestions. So, Harry remained quiet and merely sat there at his desk, waiting for the class to actually begin.

"Potter!" Snape suddenly snapped severely.

Harry, already tense from everything else, nearly jumped out of his seat. His power, on the other hand, was not so easily controlled. Just as Snape was opening his mouth to scream out the rest of his question, Harry's entire body flashed neon green and then spiral-shaped energy rippled out from him in all directions. Instantly, the class was all dull-eyed and all the tension that had been building in Professor Snape's form evaporated and he was standing there asleep on his feet practically.

Harry looked around, confirming that everybody was in trance, then sighed to himself and silently vowed to work harder at controlling his new ability.

Five minutes of rapid suggestions later, Harry snapped his fingers from his seat and everybody in the classroom blinked. Professor Snape, thinking no amount of time had passed from shouting Potter's name, finished his sentence, not consciously aware that it was _not_ what he'd originally planned on saying.

"Ten points, Potter!" he exclaimed.

"For what, Professor sir?" Harry innocently remarked.

The Potions Master paused and looked the boy over once before replying, "For having an immaculate work area and all necessary materials at the ready. Today we will be brewing...."

The Gryffindor/Slytherin class almost had a conniption as they collectively realized that the meanest and most foul-tempered Professor to ever grace the halls of Hogwarts had actually just _given_ points to a Gryffindor, not taken them away. Then even more shocking, instead of rubbing it in, or taking away even more points than he'd just given, he proceeded in teaching the lesson without so much as another mean-spirited syllable for the next two hours. Unlike the other classes, which were just introductory and theory-based, despite Harry's rapid PHS's to him, Professor Snape had the class actually brewing a potion and just put the instructions for it on the blackboard and, not in so many words, told them to figure it out for themselves on how to do it. Furthermore, it was common knowledge that Snape liked to walk around and hover over the students while they were brewing for the lab portion of the class. Today, he just sat at his desk and stared out over the lot of them. When Neville had been about to put in some ingredients too early, his voice rang out like a shot and warned the boy to stop and read the directions again. Thankfully there were no accidents that day and at the end of class, the potions were nearly decent. Not bad for their first time really.

Harry smirked and was rather pleased with his fast-thinking PHS matrix for Professor Snape. While it wasn't ideal, and he certainly wouldn't be staying after to ask for some extra tutoring like he did from the other teachers, Harry knew that this first potions class could have been a lot worse that it ended up as.

The next time he encountered Professor Snape, however, things did not turn out as peacefully.

_Hagrid's Hut_

_Same Day_

Ron accompanied Harry to Hagrid's hut that afternoon, looking a bit like a lost puppy after Potions class when he asked to join Harry. Neville was almost as bad, hanging out behind them in the corridor, looking longingly over at them every once in a while before staring at the ground whenever Harry caught him looking. So, having a heart, Harry invited Neville along too.

At five to three they left the castle and made their way across the grounds. Hagrid lived in a small wooden house on the edge of the forbidden forest. A crossbow and a pair of galoshes were outside the front door. When Harry knocked they heard a frantic scrabbling from inside and several booming barks. Then Hagrid's voice rang out, shouting, "Back Fang! Back!"

Hagrid's big, hairy face appeared in the crack as he pulled the door open. "Hang on," he said. "C'mon, back ye go Fang." He let them in, struggling to keep a hold on the collar of an enormous black boarhound.

There was only one room inside. Hams and pheasants were hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle was boiling on the open fire, and in the corner stood a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it. "Make yerselves at home," said Hagrid, letting go of Fang, who immediately bounded straight over to Ron and started licking his ears. Like Hagrid, Fang was clearly not as fierce as he looked.

"Hagrid," Harry introduced his two friends, "This is Ron Weasley, and Neville Longbottom. They're in my classes with me."

"Another Weasely, eh?" Hagrid said, pouring out several mugs of water for his guests. "I spent half me life chasin' yer brothers outta the Forest over there. Eh, Longbottom you say?" the large man looked Neville over, his expression slightly uncomfortable all of a sudden. "Nice ta meet ya."

"N-nice to meet you too, sir," Neville stuttered and gulped.

Hagrid shrugged. "I ain't no 'sir', jus' Hagrid."

He turned and served the drinks and some home made pastries called Rock Cakes. Given how hard just the raisins in it were, Ron suggested they might really be made out of rocks. Didn't stop him from trying to eat it though, both Harry and Neville observed. They spent most of the time discussing the First Years first classes, and Harry carefully navigated the web of half-truths and not-quite-lies to keep from revealing his use of powers over the past week. Particularly when their last class with Snape came up.

"It wasn't as bad as I was expecting," Neville freely admitted, having warmed up to Hagrid after the first few tense minutes. "I mean he yelled a lot and didn't seem to like Harry for some reason, but I half expected to be in the Hospital Wing because of an exploded cauldron or something this afternoon."

"Yeah, I'd heard Snape can get real nasty when he wants to be, but he actually wasn't that bad. Almost like Binns, the way he just sat there and lectured us, not doing much of anything else," Ron agreed.

"Huh," Hagrid shrugged, somewhat surprised as he'd almost half-expected to need to defend the Potions Professor, but that no longer seemed to be the case. Maybe the moody Slytherin was actually starting to change, like Professor Dumbledore always said he would?

That's about the point that Harry, his eyes wandering over the table covered in old newspapers (probably for Fang if he wanted to think about it), he came across an article depicting Gringotts being broken into. Several previously unimportant facts came together suddenly and he realized what it all meant. Instead of blurting out his findings and personal conclusions, Harry realized he had a different tact that he could try first.

"_Harry Potter's Saimin Says_," he intoned to the somewhat noisy room. A room that was instantly quiet, save for some soft whining from Fang, who began to figure out something wasn't right. Harry waved his hand at the large boarhound, and wasn't really surprised, but still disappointed when the dog remained completely unaffected from his hypno power. The others though, he was pleased to see were all sitting perfectly straight, yet completely relaxed, proving yet again that the PHS from the Opening Feast remained in place and effective.

Just to make sure, Harry then cast an H. Illusion on Hagrid, focusing on how he wanted the friendly giant to trust him completely and tell him the complete and utter truth. Once that was done, he put Neville and Ron into relaxing slumbers and began interviewing Hagrid.

"Hagrid, can you hear me?" he asked probingly.

"... a'corse I kin heer ye, Perfesser Dumbledoor..." the hairy man mumbled through his beard.

_'He thinks I'm Professor Dumbledore,_' Harry silently observed, _'Interesting.'_

"Good, that's good, Hagrid," he said, trying to mimic the Headmaster's way of speaking. Even if Harry had a girl's voice, or one like Darth Vader, he knew that Hagrid would hear it as Professor Dumbledore's voice no matter what, but it was more often the _way_ a person spoke that could make or break the illusion, as Harry had found out the hard way when he'd been hypnotizing the neighbors.

"Hagrid, I need you to do something for me," Harry said, thinking carefully.

Hagrid immediately perked up, like a dog that just heard the sound that meant someone was going to play with them for a while. "A'corse Perfesser, I'll do anythin' you say."

Harry frowned, but knew now wasn't the time to be analyzing or correcting behavior in his friend. That could wait until after he had the answers to his questions.

"Very good Hagrid," he said, then asked, "I simply need you to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the absolute truth, regardless of what I ask you, or how it sounds, all right?"

"'Course Perfesser..." Hagrid agreed.

"You are no doubt aware of the break in at Gringotts, yes? Well, I believe we both know exactly which vault was broken into. Vault 713. The vault Prof... er, that I had you retrieve a single package from, yes?"

"Yes Perfesser," Hagrid nodded dutifully.

"Tell me Hagrid, and remember what I said about being honest, do you know what is in the package?"

"Er, not really, Perfesser," the man said, looking a bit uncomfortable still.

"Hagrid," Harry said warningly.

"Alls I know is that it has sumthin ta do wit yer work with Nicholas Flamel, and that it's supposed to be protected by you and the other Professors on the Third Floor Corridor. Tha's why ye needed Fluffy, te guard the entrance and whatnot. I swear, Professor, that's all I know!"

"It's all right, Hagrid, it's all right, calm down," Harry immediately worked to calm and relax the groundskeeper once more, as he'd been getting more and more worked up. When he was back to the same state of relaxation he'd started at, Harry took a deep breath and considered what he'd learned so far.

"I trust you Hagrid," Harry told him. "And I trust that you never betrayed my trust by looking in the bag, that's not what I'm saying at all. However, you're not as... simple as others would make you out to be. I know you have a brain Hagrid, and I know you know how to use it. I am asking if you have _figured out_ what is in the package, and if you have, I need to know what you think it is. It is very important that you are honest with my Hagrid. Now... tell me what is in the package?"

Hagrid almost looked like he was about to tense up again, but thankfully that didn't happen. Harry breathed a sigh of relief when he instead started speaking about Chocolate Frog cards and Nicholas Flamel and how he hadn't meant to and other stuff, but finally the truth came out. What was inside the package, what had been hidden away and was being protected at the end of the third floor corridor in the school.

The Philosopher's Stone.

Harry needed a minute after that revelation came to light. After all, you would have to be a total recluse not to have heard of the pinnacle of fantasy fiction, the treasure of all alchemy, metal into gold, water into wine, immortality, etc, etc, etc and so on. It was real, and it was in the school right now.

Harry almost commanded Hagrid to go retrieve the Stone a second time, until he stopped himself and remembered what else Hagrid had told him. More than just Hagrid's giant three-headed dog was protecting the stone, and a safe bet that each of the other teachers at the school had put up at least part of the protections that were there. Now the question became, which teachers, and what protections.

After that, Harry carefully brought all three of them out of trance, giving a few PHS to block the memory of his conversation with Hagrid, and give the impression that they had talked for the whole afternoon and that they were tired and hungry and needed to get up to supper at the castle. Hagrid escorted them the whole way and no one was the wiser that Harry now knew the secret of Hogwarts. Well, one of them anyway.

That night, after supper, on the way back to Gryffindor Tower from the Great Hall, Harry tried to swing around past the door at the end of the third floor corridor. Filch was there within seconds, stopping him from even getting close, and shouting at him the whole way, until Harry finally lost patience with the irritable old man and put him in Trance and left him standing there until someone found him, and then he'd wake up, not remembering a thing. That he'd overcome the established PHS to either ignore or avoid Harry any time he saw him worried Harry for all of a minute when he noticed that the old man was sweating and obviously wanting to leave, but was just as clearly wanting to make sure that Harry stayed away from that door. That _everyone_ stayed away from that door.

So clearly, more than just the dog and whatever traps the Professors had put there protected the Stone, but Harry wasn't so sure that there was not some other way around to get to it. He just had to find it.

_Shore Of Black Lake_

_Saturday, September 7_

Harry took a deep, calming breath as he stood at the edge of the lake, and stared out over the waters. As much as he wanted to avoid being near his greatest weakness, (the warning Roger had given him about never being able to swim was never far from his thoughts), there was just something relaxing about the scene of the gently lapping waves against the rocky shore. And he really needed to relax right then.

This was one of the few times he wished his powers worked on himself, but he hadn't figured it out just yet, and zapping himself in the mirror wasn't cutting it. Besides, he hated the thought of being that vulnerable, open to suggestion from anyone passing by at that moment. No matter how much Ron and Neville got on his nerves. Well, admittedly it was mostly Ron, but Neville didn't make it any less stressful.

Ron was being his typical selfish self, and kept trying to talk Harry into some kind of chess tournament, or maybe it would be more accurate to say a chess marathon. Neville was all too happy to offer to play in Harry's place, but only after Harry himself invited the incredibly shy boy to join them, over and over again. It certainly didn't help that Ron outright refused Neville's offers, and complained to Harry about Neville 'hanging on' whenever Neville's back was turned. As much as Harry was intrigued by the both of them, he found both their attitudes highly annoying.

So, rather than play chess all day, or try and work on Neville's shyness, which was not helped by Ron's general attitude, Harry had slipped out after breakfast and decided to go for a walk around the lake. And he may have also left a couple of Post Hypnotic Suggestions that Ron and Neville both think the other was 'Harry', at least until he showed back up.

He'd actually just started out with a walk around the castle, finding and taking various secret passageways like he'd been doing so for years. He'd already been up to the Astronomy Tower, arguably the best view in the entire school of the countryside, the greenhouses and the myriad of strange and magical plants they offered, and even trailed the edge of the Forbidden Forest, which had lead him to the shores of the Black Lake. He'd traversed roughly a third of it's circumference in the fifteen minutes since he'd first come by the lake.

He was planning on turning back soon, as he was getting a fair distance from the castle, but wanted to put that off for as long as possible. The sounds of nature and the lack of stressful individuals was greatly calming for him, and he didn't want to risk a breakdown or blow-up or worse some kind of psychological issue that evolved from all this stress he was feeling.

Only five minutes later, he was startled by a sound behind him, but before he could turn to see what it was, _something_ hit him and he couldn't move and was frozen in place. He couldn't even open his mouth or twitch so much as a finger. Heck, he couldn't even blink! Though thankfully he could still move his eyes and everything.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here, Potter?" a sneering voice said from just beyond Harry's range of vision. Not that he needed to see who it was, the tone of hate in the familiar voice was more than enough to identify who had trapped him here.

"A bit out of bounds, aren't you Potter?" Professor Snape sneered as he abruptly stood before Harry. "What's this? Nothing to say? Refusing to answer a _professor's_ direct question?! I should take points for that, but I've always felt there was something to... corporal punishment."

If Harry could've moved his facial muscles at all, he would have scowled and still not answered the bastard. Instead, he turned his attention towards more urgent issues, like getting out of this situation without outright revealing himself, or being attacked further by this cretin. Unfortunately, while it may have been unconscious movements, he found that he had to actually be able to wiggle his fingers, let alone move at all, in order to successfully cast an H. Illusion, and LIME wasn't working either. Whether that was because his power was as bound as he was, or the fact that Snape had yet to look him in the eye, he couldn't figure out, but for the moment he was completely helpless.

He could have used Trance Ripple, he knew, but once the man was in trance, he would require instructions, and if Harry couldn't speak that meant he couldn't command Snape to do anything and they'd both just be standing there until somebody came along or worse. So for the moment, Harry allowed himself to suffer through Snape's venting.

"I don't know what it is that you did, you insufferable glory hound, but I know you did _something_ to me! You humiliated me in front of my own Slytherins! If it weren't for my own security measures, I wouldn't even be sure what would have happened, but I _know_ you did something, and I intend to find out!" Snape was pacing back and forth as he raged.

"I have means of making you talk, Potter," the greasy professor hissed right into Harry's ear, "Some more... unpleasant than others. If you tell me what I want to know, and politely, I'll let you go with a warning and loss of a few points for lying to a teacher. If, however, you aren't forthcoming with the information, well..." the man trailed off as he lavishly pulled out his wand and then wordlessly made a nearby stone explode, which was also oddly silent. Harry only realized after the pebbles started falling that a Silencing spell had been cast just before or at the same time as the spell that made the rock explode like that. If he could've, Harry would've gulped nervously at the very least.

"Now then, Potter," Snape harshly tapped his wand against Harry's forehead, and suddenly he could move his head and face. The rest of him though, was still frozen.

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but was struck by another spell before he could utter a word. When he actually tried, no sound came from his throat. It wasn't a silence spell like had been cast on the explosion, but something more complex that made his entire throat feel tingly, both tight and loose at the same time.

"Ah-ah-ah, Potter," the greasy-haired bastard clucked his tongue. "No screaming for help, like the coward that you are. Anything that is not the truth or a direct response to my questions won't leave your filthy lie-spitting mouth, no matter how hard you try. It's a complex piece of magic, and not very reliable for interrogations, but it will keep you from spouting more of your lies. Now, tell me Potter, what did you do in my class yesterday, and how did you do it?"

"What are you talking about, Professor Snape?" Harry asked in an almost cheerful voice, "I brewed a potion for curing boils. What I did was—" Snape punched/slapped they boy across the face. It was Snape's fist, but to Harry, compared with Dudley's and his gangs beatings it felt like a sharp slap.

"No cheek, boy!" the mad Professor snarled. "What did you do?!" For good measure he gave Harry another punch/slap across the other cheek.

"I made sure you actually acted like the teacher you're supposed to be. And I'm not telling you how, because there's nothing to tell! Now I _suggest_ that you..." Harry kept talking but no more sound came out.

Snape's head was turning a mottled purple and red that Harry recalled was the color Uncle Vernon turned whenever he was _really_ mad. He'd already tried using LIME on this guy, but the words weren't coming out, and the man's gaze was all over the place, so he couldn't establish eye-contact. He was tempted to use either the generic trance trigger he'd put in everybody at the Sorting Ceremony, or risk a Trance Ripple, but his voice had failed again before he could unleash the attack.

"Like a... teacher, you say?" Snape growled through clenched teeth. "You... _made_ me act... like a teacher? Well then, _Potter_, I suppose I should accommodate you and fulfill my role as a _teacher_ to the hilt. Please allow me then, to _teach you_ how to swim! _Levicorpus_!" The man waved his wand and suddenly Harry was upside down and floating about six feet in the air, his head a mere two and a half feet from the rocky ground. Then he began moving, not on his own, but through the air until he was over the waters of the lake.

Harry's heart began pumping full of adrenaline, fear flooding his veins as his face shown with the growing horror he was feeling. When he was over twenty feet from shore, above waters that clearly ran pretty deep, his motion finally stopped. He looked back at Snape and cursed himself and his new tormentor. With a demented glee in his black eyes, the Potions Professor calmly cast, "_Finite,_" before turning around and walking back to the castle.

Harry fell into the lake.

He could move and speak and his powers were working and he was a second from firing off a full-bore Trance Ripple that would've turned everybody in the region into a standing zombie. Except that he hit the water before that second was up and suddenly his body wasn't moving right and his powers might as well not have even been there. That's what it felt like anyway. And to make it worse, he couldn't make his hand and arm move to reach his wand so he could try casting any of the spells he'd learned.

First reaction in this situation, panic. It's always panic, and it was only the fact that his entire body seemed to turn into a lead weight that kept him from thrashing about, though it certainly didn't help with his fear as he began sinking into the dark depths.

It certainly didn't hurt that the one thought repeating through his head was that if he opened his mouth to breathe, he was dead, so he kept his mouth shut. After a few seconds, during which he sunk almost twenty feet and was still sinking, his panic ebbed enough for conscious thought to return, and he started using it as quickly as he could to try and figure out a way to survive this. And maybe a neuron or two on ways to get revenge on Snape for this.

Trying again to reach for his wand, he was frustrated when his hand couldn't even make a fist. He could move his arms only a little bit, and they were being pushed around more by the currents than anything he was doing. His legs, he feared he was paralyzed because he could not feel his legs at all and couldn't tell if they were moving or not. The worst of it though? He was still upside down and he knew he was going head-first straight down, and there was nothing he could do about it.

That is until a great big shape drifted up to him. He didn't know what it was at first, but then he caught sight of giant tentacles out of the corner of his eye, and a snapping beak at the center. After that, it was pretty simple to put together the facts and realize that the giant squid had somehow found him.

Taking a gamble, and hoping and praying with all his might that it would work, Harry used up some of his rapidly dwindling air supply and gasped out, the bubbles escaping from his mouth, the word "Help!"

That seemed to be all the giant squid was waiting for as it immediately wrapped Harry in one of it's larger suction tentacles, and lifted him up out of the water with amazing speed and strength, and then almost casually tossed him back towards the school. Harry actually reached the castle before Snape did, flying through the air without a broom.

Thankfully, the only thing that kept Harry from dying upon impact, was the fact that he didn't impact with anything. Fred and George Weasley had been outside when they looked up and saw a screaming and dripping wet Harry Potter come flying at them from the general direction of the lake. They shared a look and then grinned wildly as they raised their wands in unison and caught Harry with the new cushioning spell they'd adapted. Harry landed safely and soundly in the middle of the main court yard amidst the sound of a gigantic and very noisy fart.

Once he was safely sitting on the cobblestones, Harry just sat there for a second, then glanced over at the twins, and then he started to chuckle before it developed into full-body laughter. Suddenly, amidst his giggles, he screamed out, "WHOOPEE!" Fred and George soon joined him in laughter.

That night, Professor Snape was absent from dinner, and the reason why was soon discovered as Madame Pomfrey, the school nurse, reported that he'd apparently tried to drown himself in his own cauldron that afternoon. The horrid concoction appeared to be a mixture of several potions, all of which gave him one symptom each. Symptoms, Pomfrey reported, that most school children tend to use to get out of classwork or test-taking. She would have him cured before classes on Monday, but in the mean time he was suffering through a fever, a cold, constant sneezing, a bloody nose, pox-boils, a migraine headache, near-constant vomiting, diarrhea, athlete's foot, and various swellings in most of his extremities, one in particular.

Fred and George tipped their glasses in salute to Harry, who returned the gesture and chuckled softly to himself. It wasn't even that hard to get the Third Year twins help, he didn't even have to hypnotize them or anything. He just made a bet that if they put together the absolute worst punishment imaginable for Professor Snape and set up the prank, then he would guarantee Snape not only getting caught in it, but willingly throwing himself onto whatever it was. It had taken a combination of H. Illusion and Brainwash to get it done, but the greasy bastard was now suitably punished in Harry's book.

Besides, if nothing else, he learned a valuable lesson from the encounter. One he would not soon forget.

_Hogwarts_

_Next Thursday_

The following week established the pattern that the students of Hogwarts would follow during the year, save for a notice in the Common Rooms on Monday that rather than a free day, the coming Thursday would be dedicated to beginning lessons for riding flying broomsticks for the First Years. Of course, this sparked a great deal of interest and soon had the entire year buzzing about it.

The boys tended to be more enthusiastic about it than the girls, in particular Ron and Draco. The former saying he borrowed his brothers broomsticks from time to time, and the latter spinning tales about escaping from muggles in helicopters and aeroplanes. Hermione advertised that she'd been reading _Quidditch Through The Ages_, and a number of other flying broomstick references from the Library and was open to share her findings with anyone that asked. Only Neville and Harry, among the Gryffindor boys anyway, seemed to be unaffected by everyone else's enthusiasm.

Neville, like Hermione, was extremely nervous, as flying on a broomstick was one of the many things where book smarts didn't really help in the beginning. Harry, on the other hand, was decidedly indifferent towards the upcoming special class. Now if it were a swimming class, then he'd definitely be agitated, as he was starting to develop an outright phobia of the water, and the Black Lake in particular. Thankfully, the flying lessons would be done in one of the courtyards just inside the castle's walls, completely on the other side from the lake. So no worries about falling in or anything like that.

Unfortunately, as had been revealed with the notice of the flying lessons, the First Year Gryffindors would be joining the First Year Slytherins for their joint lessons with Madam Hooch, the Flying Instructor and Quidditch Referee.

Come Thursday afternoon, they made their way out to the grounds where Madam Hooch had set up two rows of brooms on the ground. Thankfully it was a clear day for flying and no sign of bad weather coming in.

"Hurry up now," the short, gray-haired woman with yellow hawk eyes snapped at them, "Everybody pick a broomstick and stand by it. Be quick about it!"

Immediately, all the First Years scurried to stand by a broomstick, and it wound up that Harry was between Hermione and Neville, with Ron on the other side of Neville. Both of them were tense and extremely nervous, and Harry wished there was something he could do, but he didn't want to risk anything out in the open like this. Then again, who said he had to do it openly?

He was about to reach over and put both of them in a light trance, when Madam Hooch called, "Stick your right hand over your broom, and say UP!"

Frowning at the interruption, Harry instead did as the teacher ordered and said casually while holding his hand over it carelessly, "Up." To his utter surprise, the broom instantly snapped into his hand and stayed there as though he'd been born with it in his hand. "Wicked," he grinned.

"Up! Up! UP!" Hermione was ordering/begging her broom, while Neville's remained flat on the ground no matter what he said or did.

Sighing, Harry reached out with his left hand and casually touched Hermione on her shoulder, letting flow a stream of power flow from his hand directly into her body, whispering to her, "Relax. Follow Madam Hooch's instructions and you'll be fine. That's what she's here for after all. To show us the proper way to fly. Just relax."

He was surprised he'd even had to say it twice, but the bushy-haired girl was _that_ tense. Finally her broom came to her hand the very next time she spoke. He didn't really want to consider this a 'technique', as it was the same power when he cast H. Illusion or LIME, just through skin-to-skin contact, and there was no manipulation of the subconscious at all, it was just using his hypno energy to put her in a light trance. If he thought about it, he'd probably call it his _Trance Touch_, or something like that. Before he could do the same for Neville, unfortunately, the rosy-cheeked boy had lost all patience and just picked his broomstick up when Madam Hooch's back was turned. Harry considered 'zapping' the boy anyway, but the teacher turned around and resumed the lesson before he could.

She proceeded in showing them how to properly mount and sit on the broom, and Harry couldn't help enjoying it when she told Malfoy he'd been doing it wrong for years. Finally, she judged them ready enough to actually try taking off, and coasting for a few meters. The more complex flight maneuvers would come in later lessons the following weeks. It was a full-term course after all.

"Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard," she ordered. "Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle; three... two..."

Neville, however, nervous and frightened, jumped the whistle, literally, as he pushed off the ground too soon and too hard, shooting practically straight up into the sky. Harry was really wishing he'd used his _Trance Touch_ on the scared boy by now.

"Come back, boy!" Madam Hooch cried out.

Harry saw it happening, at twenty feet, Neville's hand started to slip, and he kept rising higher. By the time he'd finally fall, there was no saying what height he'd end up falling from. Harry couldn't watch this, knowing there was something he could do to save his... his friend.

"NEVILLE!" he shouted, his voice echoing with power. "_Enter the Magic Tower_!"

The moment those words were spoken, the situation changed in a heartbeat. Neville lost all trace of fear within him. He gripped his broom with surety and stopped his ascent around thirty-five feet. Then he just sat there in the air, not doing anything. Harry whispered something, keeping his eye on Neville the entire time, but no one else heard or understood what he'd said. Not that anybody was paying attention to him as Neville wheeled about and his broom slowly lowered itself back to the ground where it had started from. If only a safe landing had been all they had to worry about.

Right before he'd been about to land, a strong wind came practically out of nowhere and blew the broom off course, and Neville, no matter how relaxed or trusting in Harry Potter, didn't have the experience to compensate for it. Suffice to say, the broom slammed into the castle wall a couple of times and Neville fell off it and when he landed, there was a sharp crack that echoed across the grounds.

Madam Hooch was there at once and after giving a bit of fuss over it, decided that Neville had broken his wrist and needed to go to the Hospital Wing. She left to escort him there, but warned against anybody trying to fly before she got back, otherwise they risked expulsion. More than likely it would be a week or two of detention, but the First Years didn't understand that quite yet.

Or maybe a few of them did, as Draco Malfoy suddenly dashed forward out of the cluster of students and grabbed something shiny off the ground. It was soon revealed to be Neville's Rememberall, a gift sent to him from his grandmother at home.

"Give it here, Malfoy!" Harry ordered, expecting the command to be obeyed. Imagine his surprise when instead, the arrogant Slytherin mocked him and gave a suggestion on where he would put Neville's property.

Before Harry could even raise his hand to snap his fingers, Malfoy had grabbed his broom and was up in the air like he'd been doing it for years. And if the boy's loud mouth was to be believed, he had.

"No, don't! You'll get in trouble!" Hermione cried out, whatever spell of calm Harry had cast on her wearing off in all this excitement. Regardless, Harry ignored her and silently summoned his own broom. The fact that it was on the ground several feet away seemed to impress some of the other First Years, but Harry hadn't even noticed.

He wasn't even sure what he'd been so nervous about to begin with. Flying was easy. Heck, it was wondrous! But he had a more important task to accomplish before enjoying the sheer joy of flight.

Harry was somewhat curious about triggering Malfoy while he was mid-air like this. The slapstick nature of the PHS was sheer coincidence, as all he did was instill a mind-numbing terror in Malfoy and his two stooges every time he snapped his fingers. The problem was, now that he was on a broomstick, his instincts might be enough to keep him on the broom instead of falling off it, and he could get much farther on a broom than on foot before the terror waned. Besides, the true objective was Neville's property.

He arrowed the broom towards Malfoy and shot over the blonde's hair close enough to shave a few of the perfectly oiled strands right off. "Give it here, Malfoy! Or I'll knock you off your broom!"

They played 'tag' for a minute longer, Harry flying rings around Malfoy, who only just managed to maneuver out of the way each time, usually by jerking around unpredictably. "No one up here to hide behind, Malfoy," Harry mocked. "Hand it over."

"Fine!" Malfoy, panicked, shouted and threw the shiny glass orb at the distant wall, where it would undoubtedly shatter upon impact.

Harry took half a second to glare at the Slytherin, and then snapped his fingers angrily before turning his full attention to the falling Rememberall. He didn't even remember the in between. One second he'd been hovering, the next his eyes were locked onto it like a falcon's, then he dove, moving entirely by instinct, and then the next thing he knew, he had it in his hands and everyone was coming to greet him as he landed gently on the ground in front of them.

A minute after that, Professor McGonagall ran up to them and dragged him through half the castle before introducing him to a Gryffindor Fifth Year named Wood. Oliver Wood to be precise. Though during the walk he'd been highly tempted to hypnotize his Head of House to avoid trouble, he was glad he didn't as they finally explained to him that they wanted him to join the Gryffindor Quidditch Team as their new Seeker.

It turned out that Malfoy's instincts weren't as good as Harry had thought, as when he'd snapped at him, the boy had slapped both hands on his cheeks, and then tried to run right off his broom. Madam Hooch came back with Neville, who'd only had a bruised instead of broken wrist and a dislocated shoulder, to find a forgotten Malfoy with two broken legs, a broken wrist, a dislocated shoulder and cracked ribs, not to mention a possible concussion and neck injuries. The boy was still in a panicked state and trying to run away from something, but his injuries kept him from getting far. The class was canceled after that point, particular when several students (Slytherin's included) claimed to have seen Malfoy flying his broom while she was gone. No one mentioned Harry as they all, even the Slytherin's, thought Professor McGonagall would take care of it.

The next day, when everyone saw that not only was Harry not expelled, but he got a brand new top-of-the-line broomstick in the mail, well even if Malfoy hadn't still been in the Hospital wing, due to the unusual panic attack he was said to have experienced, quite a few people were noticing Harry Potter anew.

Of course that was just fine with Harry, as it meant more people came up to him 'in private', and allowed him ample opportunity to set up more secure PHS among the students and learn more about them at the same time. By the end of the second week, Harry had at least one "friend" in each of the four Houses, even Slytherin. By the end of the third week, he knew the sociological standings within each of the Houses the same as if he'd been Sorted into all four and may as well have been with how everyone treated him.

It was good to be popular.

To Be Continued...

_AN: My apologies about the short chapter and the lack of 'good stuff'. I'm still trying to set up all of the dynamics. After Halloween, which I hope to get to by the next chapter or so, there will be a lot more 'good stuff'. Keep those "Suggestions" coming people. Already had a few good ones, but the surprising drop in reviews waned the inspiration for this story, delaying it's release until Christmas. So, please keep whatever "Suggestions" and even "techniques" for Harry to use his powers with. Oh, and kudos to _simonmountney , ReflectionsOfReality , uo-chou , ghost lord 101 , _and _Cyrus Majin _for their awesome suggestions. Thanks For Reading and Please Review!_


	4. Interlude: Halloween

Interlude – Halloween Battle:

_Hogwarts Great Hall_

_Thursday, October 31_

Harry sat at the Gryffindor table, reading one of his Psych/Hypnotism books in the afternoon after classes were over with for the day. Decorations for the Halloween feast were being put up by Hagrid and a few of the Professors, Professor Flitwick in particular. Some people, he knew from first-hand accounts, thought that he was a brain for reading the books he did, and maybe he was. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, unless of course you shoved your intelligence into every one else's face and act like an arrogant know-it-all.

For Harry though, reading such books, which most wouldn't even pick up until they were in college or university and 19 or 20 years old with a lot more education behind them than an 11 year old wizard, was not about liking the subject or just wanting to know stuff in general. For him, learning the science and psychology of hypnotism and the human mind was as vital as learning how to properly hold his wand.

Since he'd eaten the Hypno Hypno Fruit and gained supernatural powers to hypnotize other people with virtual ease, he'd been going around learning to use his powers by sheer trial and error, and more than a bit of luck too. Though he'd read a lot during the summer between eating the fruit and coming to Hogwarts, it had mostly been in hopes of getting new ideas on how to use his powers, maybe find out how to tell the difference between somebody truly in trance and someone faking it and what limits he had in making people do stuff that he wanted. Since he'd come to Hogwarts though, too much had happened for him to only be worried about selfish stuff like that.

For example, just a few hours ago, when they were getting out of their Charms class. While it hadn't been the first time, he'd had to erase and modify someone's memories with his powers. Then he'd been forced to use Brainwash a couple of times too and very subtly at that, with no major changes, just very minor ones to their overall personalities and decision-making thought processes.

But that was the recent, and unfortunately, there had been a lot more in the past.

Harry sighed and closed his book, letting his mind wander as he watched the decorations being put up.

After the first month of school was over with, he'd discovered the ease and access that being popular gave him. While he may still have been under the naïve delusion that he just wanted to protect himself and not let people find out about his powers as an excuse, it didn't stop him as he made the rounds and made sure to introduce himself to every single student and person (ghosts included) at least once, sometimes more if they were unusually resistant or just interesting. Like the 7th Year Hufflepuff that insisted that she only be called by her last name, she definitely fit into the latter category. Besides that and being more than a bit clumsy, he discovered that she was also a Metamorphmagus, giving her shape-shifting powers that no one else in the school could learn or do on their own. Sort of like his hypnosis powers.

He discovered a few other gems such as Honks... Thonks... Tonks... whatever her name was. There were the animal speakers, a few people in Slytherin that could speak to snakes like he could, but also a few people in Ravenclaw that could talk to birds and owls, while there was a single 6th Year Hufflepuff that could talk to plants the same way. Oddly, the only special talents in Gryffindor had to do with one that could be also seen as some kind of harmless oddity, but was no less special, yet just not as noticeable.

For example, the Weasley Twins really _could_ speak mind-to-mind, and though it made hypnotizing one alone without the other very difficult, it was interesting nevertheless. Another was one of the older Prefects, he was one of the best Prefects in the school simply because he _always_ knew when mischief was afoot. The reason being, Harry found out and was the only other one to know, that this unique Prefect could _sense_ magic as it was happening, who was casting it, and exactly where they were in relation to himself. There were less than a dozen other quirks such as them throughout Gryffindor House, while there were sometimes over two dozen amongst the other Houses. Odd, but no less so than their existence in the first place.

He had only discovered all this about halfway through October though, and was still finding more such people every day, but only because he was looking for them now. That was after he became popular enough that he was trusted by people individually, however. When he first started his campaign of meeting everyone in the castle and planting the necessary PHS in their minds, there were some unfortunate bumps in the road.

After the incident with Malfoy and the Rememberall, Professor McGonagall, Head of Gryffindor House, placed him on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. The following morning at breakfast, he received a racing broom with the post, while no one told him and she certainly didn't admit it, Harry knew that the woman had bought the broomstick for him. He didn't even have to hypnotize her or anything! Unfortunately, right after breakfast, Malfoy had shown up with his two goons and had them take the broom from him before he could even unwrap it from the packaging.

Amazingly, the blonde little git was completely healed with only some red bruising around his wrist and neck that looked blotchy on his pale skin. The confrontation was short, but intense as Malfoy learned that an exception had been made on Harry's behalf, and he hadn't even had to do anything except fly on a school broom for two minutes. Malfoy would have probably tried to break it or something, when Harry had enough and triggered the three morons, despite Ron and Neville being right beside him the whole time.

It was the first of several things that would change Harry's mind about his attitude towards his hypno powers. Dumb and Dumber reacted same as usual almost instantly. They screamed, slammed into each other, and then ran off after picking themselves up. Malfoy, however, tensed all over and his jaw set even as his eyes filled with panic.

Seeing this, Harry almost flew into a panic himself, when he started paying closer attention to Draco's body language. The pompous prat was shaking all over and sweat was pouring out of his pores, it was painfully obvious that he was scared out of his mind, but he didn't scream and he didn't run. When next he spoke, it was with such venom that Neville and Ron both flinched back. Harry, however, narrowed his gaze in suspicion.

"I _challenge_ you Potter, to a Wizard's Duel!" Draco growled out angrily, pure rage spewing from him.

Realization hit Harry in that instant, how the blonde Slytherin could resist the PHS at all was because he was channeling all of that fear and panic into his anger, and for that matter it was probably the first time that he'd ever been truly angry in Harry's presence.

Harry remembered later that Ron, who'd been briefly stunned by Draco's vehemence, had been about to say something, but Harry regained his balance first and stopped him. He then took a gamble that even after the fact, he wasn't sure if it had been worth it. He pushed Malfoy's buttons and tried to get him angrier, all just to see how far he could go with it.

"I refuse," Harry had spat in Malfoy's face.

"WHAT?!" the blonde brat had screeched loud enough that Harry worried his glasses would crack.

"I refuse. First of all, I don't even know what a Wizard's Duel is, and I doubt that either of us would do very well in it since we've only had a month of schooling. Second, what you're challenging me over is childish and not worth the time or effort. It's a broomstick that was given to me by someone else. Until I actually open the package, it's not even my property yet, so you would have to face whoever sent it to me before anything else. And lastly," Harry had gotten a bare inch in front of Draco's face, noses almost touching, and was pleased to find he was, if only a little bit, taller than his school rival. "You're not worth my time, Malfoy. Get out of here, before I do something that you'll regret. Now!" He then snapped his finger right by his ear.

A mix of rage, fear, anger, and terror flashed through Draco's eyes, and finally he snapped. He slapped both cheeks, screamed at the top of his lungs and started running down the hall at top speed, soon catching up with Crabbe and Goyle and outpacing them within seconds. He kept running through the halls until supper time that day, and was jumpy until going to bed that night. Or at least that's what he'd been told by Blaise Zabini, his Slytherin 'friend', though admittedly the only one that he trusted enough not to turn his back on.

That was just one of the instances where one of Harry's post hypnotic suggestion had been overcome. Unfortunately, it was not the last.

The following week, Professor Snape took a total of 37 points away from Gryffindor House, more than half of that during Harry's Potions classes with the Slytherins. The problem, he discovered after being held back by the Professor one Friday after class, was in exactly how much that man _hated_ him. With that event plus what had happened his first Saturday at Hogwarts, it made the petty anger Malfoy spawned against him seem like a match flame against a raging inferno.

Harry was stumped for what to do until he remembered some of the quirks of his other teachers. Rather than try and 'teach' this man not to hate him through negative reinforcement, as he'd done with the Weasley Twins help for that first Saturday, he decided to go an entirely different route. The first changes he made was that every time Professor Snape began to teach, or heard the phrase "It's Time To Teach," in some form or another, every single one of his emotions went dead. Anger, rage, hate, jealousy, pettiness, happiness, joy, pride, every single emotion went out of him completely and no matter the stimulus, would not and could not return while he was teaching class. The other thing was that, in writing, he would always see the name 'Harry Potter' as 'Draco Malfoy' and vice versa. At least when grading papers and filling out the roll sheets. The last change, at least for the month of October, was that he, Severus Snape, could no longer see nor notice Harry Potter in any way at all.

What that meant was that while Harry couldn't make it so he was invisible or unseen, to Professor Snape's eyes and mind he was just another faceless Gryffindor and thus beneath his notice. Even if it was pointed out to him by every person in the school, with Harry standing right in front of him and undeniable proof of who he was, Snape could stare at him all day and wouldn't recognize him or be able to identify him at all.

That was the first intentional use of _Brainwash_ at full power that Harry had used at the school, because it had taken more than subtle suggestions to put that last PHS through. Before that, he'd only used Brainwash to push through some hard-to-accept suggestions, or to erase memories that were best left forgotten. This time, he'd had to actually go into the man's mind and permanently separate the connection and association of the name Harry Potter, the identity and history of Harry Potter, and the sight, image, sound, and appearance of Harry Potter from each other and disassociate them from ever being reconnected to one another.

Severus Snape still knew who Harry Potter was. He still hated him with a passion unending and wanted him to be miserable for all eternity. He still knew what Harry Potter looked like. He knew what Harry Potter's name looked like on paper. He also knew everything he'd ever known about Harry Potter's past and that he attended his classes in Potions and was in Gryffindor House. What he could no longer do was make the connections between all of that information.

While it wasn't the greatest being ignored in class and the hallways by the Potions Professor, Harry had to admit that it was better than the alternative of being targeted for social abuse by the greasy bat.

Back to today, however, Harry opened and turned the page in his book and sighed.

It started out simply enough, with a new lesson in Charms class. Professor Flitwick finally taught them the Levitation Charm that he'd been hinting at for half the semester now. The class itself was not the problem. Harry was partnered up with one of his other dorm mates, Seamus Finnegan, while Ron was partnered up with Hermione. Speaking of whom, since the train ride, Harry had been trying to get close enough to her to encourage a real friendship, but either she was too busy, too shy, or Ron showed up and insulted her and sent her running off, or dragged Harry away just to play chess.

That was another thing that had surprised Harry. He'd thought Ron was simple-minded, in the nicest way possible, and thus easy to control. It was only due to his intentional hobnobbing and meeting everyone in the school, working to become popular, that he even noticed the redhead's sabotage against him. Behind Harry's back, as in whenever he wasn't around after class, Ron changed into a grade A bully, saying he was best mates with the Boy-Who-Lived and started telling stories, blatant lies, in order to discourage any of the older years from approaching Harry to give a 'helping hand' or people from other Houses from getting near the Gryffindor table or Tower. Harry heard the rumors about himself from these very people, corrected them on the lies, and then tracked them all back to the same source; Ron Weasley.

If he didn't know any better, he'd confuse the boy for a Gryffindor version of Draco Malfoy, except that as far as Harry could tell, Draco acted the same among those he called friends as he did in public. Which, honestly, put Ron a step above Draco in Slytherin-cunning in Harry's opinion. Harry still hadn't done anything to correct Ron's behavior, because he really didn't know how to. He had two options, change Ron's status and ability to lie about him, or just change Ron, period.

If he went the first route, it would undoubtedly make Ron his enemy, and he was too new to the concept of real friends to want to give up even a bad friend like Ron. Which left changing Ron the person. If he was honest with himself, he'd already made the decision, it was just what to change him into that was the issue. But he was getting ahead of himself.

After Charms class that morning, they'd been walking along and Ron started badmouthing Hermione, his lab partner for the Levitation Charm exercise. Harry was honestly surprised, as it was the closest that the boy had ever come to showing his true colors in front of the young Potter. They didn't even know until after she bumped into Harry as she ran past that Hermione had heard every word.

If he hadn't known what he did about Ron, if he hadn't had the power to understand, change and control the people around him, and if he hadn't been mildly fascinated by the girl for most of the school year, Harry might have just ignored the event, maybe felt a bit of guilt, but chocked it up to 'girls are different than boys' in his mind and gone on with his day. As it was, seeing someone that he wanted as his friend being tormented by someone that was a very bad friend was the straw that broke the camel's back.

He'd stopped in the middle of the courtyard, clenched his fist, and flooded his body with so much hypnotic power so fast that he almost exploded on the spot. He managed to hold it in until the others realized he'd stopped and turned back.

"Harry, what..." Ron never finished the question as Harry unleashed the strongest and most powerful _Trance Ripple_ that he ever had to date, even more powerful and covering a greater distance than he had that night when he'd first discovered the ability.

Everybody, in particular one bushy-haired brunette with an armload full of books, stopped where they stood and didn't move for several minutes. Harry, having to make some fast decisions, went to Hermione first and rather convincingly managed to make the whole encounter seem like some kind of half-forgotten dream or day-mare. With Brainwash, he was sure that he could've erased the memories entirely, but he didn't want to go that far with someone like Hermione. So he just lessened the importance of the encounter and made it easier and easier for her to forget about the whole thing. Then he planted some subtle suggestions to start paying more attention to him, giving him a chance at being her friend, stuff like that. After that was taken care of, he turned his attention to Ron.

Which lead to him sitting, OK brooding, by himself after class in the Great Hall, sitting alone and thinking over what had gotten him to this point.

Ron Weasley was a weasel.

And that was putting it nicely.

He could list everything that was wrong with the boy's outlook on life and how he treated others, but he wasn't that bored. Besides, he planned on... changing that. Eventually that is.

For the short term, he made Ron forget about Hermione entirely, which afterwards gave him a constipated look as he'd tried to regain his thought-process before Harry had tranced him, and all he knew was that he'd been making fun of somebody, but now couldn't remember who that was, and had trouble thinking of someone that he wanted to make fun of. He'd switched to Neville, Malfoy, and Snape, in that order, each time pissing Harry off so much that he tranced the git again and again in attempt to curb his tongue. At least with Snape he could agree with what the weasel said.

Then Ron went and did it again in Herbology Class.

He did the same thing for Hermione once more, disassociating the memories from her mind and making the more painful emotions less focused and more ambiguous, thereby giving her a general dislike and sense of hurt associated with Ron Weasley, but nothing like the sharp and potent pain of betrayal she'd felt without his interference. Ron, on the other hand, right before Lunch, got a full-on PHS matrix in an unused classroom just inside from where the greenhouses were accessed in the castle, which made it impossible for him to verbally abuse anyone, making him forget the person he was talking about the moment before he could say anything. He held off on Brainwashing him merely because he hadn't yet decided on what he wanted to change Ron into yet.

Harry felt the need to wash after that, but instead he came into lunch on his own, where he sat, thinking over what he was going to do with his "friends", if he could even bother calling them that. After all, here he was, manipulating and outright controlling them, and yet he still called them his friends!

"Tsch," Harry hissed at himself.

Who was he kidding? Hermione was a bossy-know-it-all that put schoolwork and authority above everything else, Neville was an uber-shy nice guy that had no backbone whatsoever, and Weasley was a weasel and was only hanging around him to mooch off his popularity it seemed. Or rather, horde it all for himself.

He had no friends, not really. Not the real friends that he always dreamed about, and just because he had the power to _make_ them his friends did not make them Real Friends either. It just made him something worse than a bully, and after years of the Dursley's, Dudley and all of his gang, he absolutely refused to become that.

He sighed and finished off his drink before closing his book and standing up.

That was the real reason he was so broody right now. He'd just realized what an absolute jerk he'd been with these powers of his so far. He could count the 'good' he'd done on one hand, and the abuse of said powers for self-interest and spite by a good deal more. He really needed to think this over some more, but it was almost time for the Halloween Feast tonight, and he still had some homework to do in the Tower.

"Alright," he said to himself out loud, turning to Gryffindor Tower to get what he'd need for the rest of the afternoon. He'd decide what to do about himself tonight after the feast, and until then, he vowed not to use his cursed powers at all. At the least he'd see how well he did without the temptation, he thought, grinning.

_Hogwarts Great Hall_

_Halloween Feast_

"TROLL! TROLL IN THE DUNGEON!"

Harry blinked and looked up from his pumpkin pie as the normally timid and stuttering professor of Defense Against The Dark Arts ran screaming into the Great Hall, stopping right in front of the Head Table, and then where they could all hear, but no longer shouting, he added, "Thought you ought to know..." Then he fainted.

Harry blinked again, and by the time he finally figured out what the display really meant, the entire school erupted in mass panic, with everybody screaming, getting out of their seats, and a few even running around in circles. Harry, on the other hand, calmly put down his utensils and considered either grabbing more food, or just finishing what was already on his plate. Even if the professors didn't soon have everything in hand, and he had no reason to think they wouldn't, he could easily take care of himself.

Admittedly he'd never encountered a troll before, but just from what he knew about them after reading ahead in the DADA book, they were humanoid, not very intelligent, and could understand enough English to accept simple commands and concepts. That would be enough for him to hit them with an H. Illusion or LIME if it came down to it. And yeah, while he'd sworn off using his powers for the rest of the day, he wasn't about to let himself be killed just to keep a silly little promise like that.

A very loud cannon blast, or the sound of it anyway, echoed throughout the Great Hall. Immediate and total silence followed as everyone turned to look at Professor Dumbledore at the Head Table, his wand out and clearly was the one to have cast the spell that quieted everybody down.

"Silence!" he shouted for good measure. Surprisingly, he could shout pretty well for an old guy.

"Pretty healthy lungs for an old man," Harry mumbled to Neville, sitting beside him, who was still wide-eyed with fright.

"Harry! There's a troll!" he hissed at him. "What do we do?"

"Prefects! Lead everyone back to your Common Rooms," Professor Dumbledore ordered, "Professors will make their way to the Dungeons to cordon off this threat and ensure that no one is in danger! Please proceed in an orderly fashion out of the Hall and follow your Prefects!"

Harry sighed, and quickly finished off the pumpkin pie he'd grabbed before putting his plate down and getting to his feet. It was in the tension-filled shuffling out of the Great Hall though that he noticed something.

"Ron, where's Hermione?" he asked, after not seeing her in the crowd.

"How the bloody hell should I know?" Ron whined. "There's a bloody troll in the dungeons!"

"You really do only have a one-track mind, don't you?" Harry sighed. "Neville! You seen Hermione?"

"Uh, I saw her get up and walk out just before P-professor Quirrel came in," Neville nervously replied. "Lavender said she had to go powder her nose or something."

Harry stopped walking. They were just before the Great Staircase, and so others just walked around him. Neville and Ron, seeing that he wasn't with them any longer, turned back to see what the problem was.

"Shite," Harry cursed and turned and started to make his way to where he knew the first floor loos were supposed to be.

"Harry, w-what are you doing?" Neville asked as he and Ron followed along, both looking like they'd much rather be racing up the stairs with everyone else.

"Hermione doesn't know about the troll," was his simple and straightforward reply.

They didn't ask any more questions and just followed Harry as he raced through the corridors to the direction of restrooms. Thankfully, Harry was also keeping an eye out for the troll, because otherwise he might have missed the sharp, hurried steps of a rushing Professor Snape, who they narrowly managed to avoid by ducking into a shadowed alcove as he raced by them.

"Wonder where he's off to in such a hurry?" Ron mumbled.

"Not important right now," Harry snapped at him. "We have to find Hermione. Where the bloody hell is the girls bathroom on this floor anyway?"

Instead of an answer, the only thing that responded was a god-awful stench filling the hallway that soon had all three Gryffindors clutching their noses in efforts to deter the smell. They suffered for about ten seconds before Neville broke the pain-filled silence with a question, "By Merlin's Beard! What the bloody hell is that?"

It would seem that fate would rather answer Neville's questions than Harry's that night, as they turned a corner and saw an nine-foot dark-gray Mountain Troll standing with its back to them, shuffling down the hallway. It turned this way and that, until finally it found a doorway big enough for it and entered without even looking back at the terrified and horrified boys. When it was gone from the hallway, while not by much, the stench lessened a bit.

"Makes you wonder why people run from trolls," Ron joked nervously, "Because of the troll, or because of the stench."

"If it was told by anyone else, Ron, that might have actually been—" Harry's retort was cut off by a girl's scream, coming from the room the troll had just entered. "Hermione!" he screamed and all three ran towards the girls bathroom.

The three of them burst into the bathroom just in time to see the nine foot tall gray monster swing it's tree-root club down onto the stalls, smashing them all to pieces. A heartbeat later, Harry saw Hermione crawl out from the wreckage and try to hide under the sinks. Unfortunately, the troll saw her too.

Before it could raise it's weapon to attack once more, Harry, not thinking in the slightest, ran forward and grabbed the club before it could be swung. Neville was right behind him, though he looked scared out of his wits. Ron was petrified where he stood, in fact it was hard to tell if he was even breathing he was so still.

Unfortunately, as well-intentioned as the boys rash actions were, they did little good, as the troll lifted Harry with the club, not even noticing the extra weight until he saw the young human wizard hanging onto the end of his club and recognized that he wasn't supposed to be there. Neville ran smack dab into the back of the thing's knees and halfway knocked himself out from the impact. He just lay there, seeing stars and unable to move or do anything else.

"Harry?!" Hermione screamed.

"Hi-woah! Uh, Hi-Iiiiee, Hermyyyy-ownneee-EEE-eeeee!" Harry screamed back as the troll threw it's club back and forth, trying to get the wizard off of it. Finally, it lost all patience and raised the club up high in preparation to slam it, and the wizard attached to it, to the ground as hard as it could.

Harry, seeing it's intentions, dropped from the club onto the back of the monster's neck, while screaming, "RON! DON'T JUST STAND THERE! _DO SOMETHING_!!"

"Uh, right, do something," the red haired wizard mumbled, then glanced over at Hermione, and something sparked in the extremely slow brain of his. He brandished his wand, and intoned perfectly with the exactly proper movements, "_Windgardium Leviosa_!"

Below the troll, Neville finally came to and recognized the situation at once. He heard Harry scream at Ron, and rather than scramble back or try to run away, he pulled out his own wand, pointed it at the club and screamed the first spell that came to mind, at the exact same moment Ron cast his. "_Windgardium Leviosa_!"

The troll slammed it's club down as fast and as hard as it could, only to realize several seconds after the fact that said club was no longer in it's hands. At the same time it realized that much, it also realized that the human wizard was not longer on its club, but on it's back. It reached back with one of it's meaty paws, stretching it's back and taking a step to reach around to the back of it's neck in effort to reach the annoyance.

Harry, knowing that he had to limit the trolls movements as much as possible, considered using his wand, but then realized he had a much more potent means of accomplishing the same goal. Besides, his wand was still in his pocket and he didn't want to risk his precarious hold to grab it when he didn't even have a spell to use against this monster. So instead, he adjusted his hold so that his hands were on either side of it's head and face, ugly as it was, and then intoned to himself and out loud, "_Brainwash_."

The troll's mind was oddly surprising and disappointing at the same time. Trolls, as a species, oddly enough, have the same potential for sentience and intelligence as humans. It's there, it's just not used. At all. And the disappointing part was that it wasn't from any kind of curse, or spell cast by ancient wizards to weed out competition and making an enemy weaker. It wasn't even from laziness or other psychological issues. In the case of this one troll, he just made the simple choice not to think. And apparently every troll this one had ever met made the same choice.

Harry decided to change that.

A burst of power, a simple suggestion, and a complete rewrite of the way the troll's brain interacted with its conscious and sub-conscious thought processes, and Harry had himself a completely loyal, and even better, adaptable and eager to learn disciple that would do absolutely anything for him, no matter what.

Meanwhile, Neville and Ron's actions were having their own consequences. Whether through their unique positions, or sheer dumb luck, the club that both of them had successfully cast the same spell on, was still floating in the air. The interesting thing though, was that it was trying to float in two different directions at the same time, and this had the unfortunate side-effect of causing it to spin, rapidly, in mid-air. Harry only noticed this after he was finished rewriting the troll's brain, and seeing a spinning troll club less than a few feet from his own head had him jumping off the trolls back in a heartbeat.

"Guys!" Harry called once he was clear, "Get out of there!"

Neville immediately rolled clear, and at the same moment, Ron released his spell, which unfortunately had the effect of sending the spinning club right at the back of the troll's head, where it slammed, repeatedly, against the thick (but small) skull no less than 10 times before shattering itself to pieces. Still, amazingly, the troll actually hit the floor before all the shards of its club did.

"Wh-wh-what happened?" Hermione stuttered, coming out from below the sinks to latch onto Harry like a life-line. He immediately began using his _Trance Touch_ on her to get her to calm down. It didn't seem to have much of an effect.

Of course it could also be from the fact that they were now looking at a great big dead mountain troll.

So much for his first disciple, he sighed to himself.

"What on earth is going on in here?!" Professor McGonagall screamed from the entrance to the girls bathroom.

To Be Continued...

AN: OK, this is officially the LAST of the canon scenes, I promise! After this, completely and totally original storyline. Which is why I am asking for, yet again, some fan-suggestions for various Post-Hypnotic Suggestions, including the trigger, the action and the characters involved. I'll say this now, since I did get some comments about it in numerous reviews, Harry does learn how to perform self-hypnosis on himself, but not until Third Year. Also, they're 11 and 12 years old at the most, so keep the sexual suggestions to a minimum. Not saying don't offer them at all, just don't expect them to be used any time soon. Right now I'm looking for 'Funny-Slapstick-Comedy' type suggestions. Also, any other comments or plot suggestions would be greatly appreciated, just expect a full discussion when you do.


	5. Chapter 3

Chapter Three:

Harry, seeing that each of his friends were still in shock from their little encounter with his now dead disciple, and hearing more people rushing into the room behind his Head of House, made a flash decision and started gathering his power.

Moments later when Professors Dumbeldore, Quirrel and Snape entered, Harry was already glowing a bright neon green all over and unleashed a point blank _Trance Ripple_, stopping all the adults, and his friends, in their tracks.

After a moment to collect himself from the expenditure, Harry finally realized what thing that had been bugging him all day was really about. He considered Hermione, Neville, and yes even the idiot Ron to be _his friends_! He'd never had friends before...

Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, he decided to delay that line of thought for a less hectic moment. Right now, he had more pressing concerns. Like what to do with four Professors finding four students standing over the dead body of a mountain troll, when said students were supposed to be in their Common Room.

Harry started to pace back and forth in front of the troll corpse, while his fellow wizards and witches stood stationary waiting for him to give them commands. That was something else he'd discovered about his powers. If he had an underlying thought when using his hypnotic powers, whatever the thought it tended to act like a full suggestion to those hit by it. Such as the first time he'd hypnotized the Dursley's, he wanted them not to see him, and when he hypnotized them they couldn't see him.

It took a while, but eventually he'd noticed the trend. Whatever he was thinking at the moment that he used his powers would influence how people reacted when hypnotized. In this case, he merely focused on the thought '_Wait patiently and let me think!_' And maybe a stray '_Do whatever I tell you to!_' thrown in there as well.

Confident that he would not be interrupted this time, Harry calmly considered his options.

Obvious thing to do would be to wipe everyone's memories of this incident and let them go on with no idea of what had just happened. It would keep the Professors from punishing the students and more than that said students would not be traumatized from being in a life or death situation. Himself excluded of course.

Not that he considered himself traumatized, if he was being honest. Quite the opposite really, he felt adrenalized from the experience.

The question though, was erasing everyone's memories the right thing to do?

Yesterday, he wouldn't have hesitated in saying yes and erasing the dangerous memories immediately. Now though...

Hermione was almost killed. She'd clung to him, _him_!, when scared and afraid. She trusted him and she wanted him to protect her. She also wanted to help him when she could, as she'd demonstrated over the past two months of being in the same House.

Neville had demonstrated true courage, racing in beside him when charging the troll. Not to mention before that when he'd followed along behind just on Harry's say-so. Neville trusted and believed in Harry Potter the 'Boy-Who-Lived', but not because of stories told to him as a child, but because Harry had _proven_, to him at least, that he was _worth_ trusting and believing in.

Ron had actually done a spell perfectly on the first try and he'd done it to help other people. In spite of being petrified with fear. In spite of all the reasons he had not to, he still followed Harry rather than the crowd or going off on his own to steal the glory for himself. That showed he could learn and better himself.

And Harry himself, he had done things for these people that he had never done and probably would never do for anyone else that he knew. Certainly not just any random person that he'd met for only a minute or two while raising his own popularity. More than just that, he'd faced something together with all of them, something like that you don't just forget or treat as nothing significant at all.

They truly were, without any doubt in his mind now, his friends, and he was theirs. The very least he could do would be to act like it.

So, no wiping memories.

That still left what to do about the Professors and the fact that fours First Years had just faced and killed a fully grown Mountain Troll.

Every way he looked at it, somebody was going to be in trouble, and while his first instinct was that it might as well be him, he had the inkling of an idea of doing something else entirely. He had read about something in his psychology books about behavioral reactions. Some are so instinctive that no matter who in the world you put into certain situations, their behavior towards one another will always be the same after the situation is resolved. Mortal peril being one of those types of situations.

He stopped his pacing and faced his subjects.

This was going to take some working...

_Gryffindor Tower_

_Next Day_

"And... wide awake!" Harry snapped his fingers.

Hermione's eyes snapped open at the command, though consciously she only heard the words the same way most would hear their alarm clock in the morning. Which, she observed in her first waking moments, it just so happened to be. What had happened to the Halloween Feast? She highly doubted that even in the antiquated Wizarding World they gave alcoholic beverages to 11-year-olds, so she couldn't exactly blame this on a drunken binge like her Uncle Rory did every so often.

Ron and Neville came to a bit slower, their eyes drooping open and then blinking away the last traces of sleep from them. They just looked around, saw they were in their dorm room, and shrugged, neither questioning nor getting confused over why they couldn't remember the night before or how they came to be sitting on Harry's bed beside Hermione Granger.

"Tell me, what do you remember?" Harry asked them.

Ron needed a few minutes to get his brain in gear, while Neville was having trouble switching gears. Hermione however, had no such issues.

"I was at the Halloween Feast, presumably last night, and I had just gotten up from the table, and then... nothing until now," she answered in an accusing voice.

"Neville?" Harry prompted.

"Uh... Professor Quirrel came in and screamed something about a troll and Professor Dumbledore told us to follow the prefects back to the dorms, but we didn't for some reason. And then... and then..." he trailed off, obviously having trouble remembering.

"Troll?" Hermione exclaimed.

"Uh, I remember eating some good food at the feast," Ron offered, then scratched his head. Then he pulled off whatever bug it had been itching him.

"What troll?" Hermione repeated, ignoring Ron entirely.

"Why did you get up to leave the table, Hermione?" Harry asked in reply.

She flushed red, then mumbled her response, "I-had-to-go-to-the-loo..."

"And what happened when you got there? I assume you used the toilet of course, but after you were finished and were washing up, what happened then?" he prompted her along.

"Um," she chewed her bottom lip for a minute, racking her brain for the information, and then her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped open as the memories unfolded one at a time. "I-I remember," she stuttered.

"That's good, that's very good," Harry said quickly. "So you remember the troll being there, and then you remember what? What do you remember Hermione?"

"I... I remember..." she mumbled, her eyes racing back and forth as she searched her memories. "I remember you. You all came in. To the _girl's loo_!" she screeched suddenly.

"And what about the troll?" he quickly intercepted her.

She blinked, then blinked again as her brain switched gears. "I... it..." another slow blink. "You and Neville charged it. You almost died. Ron cast the levitation charm and knocked the troll out with its own club. You and Neville kept it from hurting me and distracted him. You saved my life."

Harry nodded along and touched her shoulder briefly in a comforting way. "And then what happened Hermione? What happened after the troll was on the floor?"

She blinked again and started nodding her head in time with Harry's. "The, the professors came in. Then you, no, I... they, she." She stopped and took a moment to organize her thoughts.

"That's alright, it'll come to you. Just let the words fill you and say the first thing that comes to mind, allowing the memories to develop on their own," he prompted, touching her shoulder just briefly again.

"Professor McGonagall wanted to know what happened," Hermione blinked. "I lied to her, told her I wanted to hunt the troll on my own because I'd read about them. Which I have."

"That's right Hermione, you're a very smart girl," Harry said with another shoulder tap.

She smiled briefly and visibly relaxed before continuing. "Then she... wait, I... I lied to Professor McGonagall. Why would I do that?"

"I don't know Hermione, why would you do that?" he asked her right back.

"I suppose," she started to say, then glanced at all three boys in turn, "I suppose I felt I owed you? But no, you never asked me to, and I wanted to get Ron in trouble, and I certainly never owed him anything, but then, well I suppose I felt it was the right thing to do. I didn't want you all to get in trouble just for saving my life. It didn't feel right."

"So you lied to a professor, four professors in fact, to protect us?" he clarified. "You took all the blame, if there even was to be any blame, upon yourself just so we wouldn't be in trouble. Isn't that something a friend does for another friend?"

Hermione grinned again, "Yes, I suppose it is, isn't it?"

Letting that thought rattle around for a bit, Harry moved on to the next step, "So then Professor McGonagall asked you..." he trailed off.

"What on earth was I thinking," Hermione nodded again, picking up where she'd left off in the memory. "Then she docked me five points. And then I remember hearing her give each of you five points for," she giggled, "sheer dumb luck. The other professors were oddly quiet. Especially after Professor Dumbledore dismissed us to our Common Room."

"So we all came back here together," Harry finished for her.

"Yes," she nodded, "but then how did we get in here? I didn't think girls were allowed in boys rooms, like boys certainly aren't allowed in girls rooms!"

"Actually, boys just aren't allowed on the staircase to the girls rooms," Harry clarified. "Nothing in the rules or anything about boys in girls rooms or girls in boys rooms. It says so in Hogwarts, A History. Or rather it _doesn't_ say."

"Oh," Hermione simply nodded her acceptance.

Harry nodded along with her for a beat before turning his attention towards Neville.

"Now Neville, you really are a great subject and I would absolutely hate to lose you as one, so in order to keep you around, I have decided that we are now friends. There are no ifs ands or buts about it. This is not your decision, I am telling you; We. Are. Friends. And anybody else who says differently is just plain wrong. Alright?" Harry said while nodding his own head and keeping eye contact with Neville.

Soon, Neville was subconsciously mirroring and nodding his own head, and a moment later when Harry smiled, he smiled as well. This had the un-astounding affect of having Neville convince himself that what Harry was saying was truth, first because he agreed with it, and second because it made him feel good.

"Alright," Neville nodded along.

Ron frowned a bit, and looked like he had something to say, but with another wave of his hand and a small Trance Touch to his shoulder, Harry soon had him compliant and silent once more. He'd deal more with him later.

"As tempting as it is to leave the two of you in the dark," Harry continued speaking with both Hermione and Neville now, "I really do consider you my friends. And friends don't keep secrets from one another. Not secrets like this. So in a minute, I'm going to show you something. Something very important, and something that I don't want anyone, who is not my friend, to know about. And Hermione, Neville? I especially do not want the Professors to know about this, or any authority figures. You'll understand in a moment why that is."

"But Harry—" Hermione started to say, but he cut her off.

"This is very important, Hermione," he told her. "It's my secret, and only I can tell people about it. If you told me a secret, I could not and would not tell anyone else what it is. Not ever. Only you can tell that secret. So please, I'm trusting you with this. Alright?"

"Alright," they all three nodded and smiled.

"Now, Neville, Hermione," he intoned, bringing forth his hands over their eyes and slowly lowered their heads, while at the same time channeling all his hypnotic power into his voice, "I want you to relax and listen to the sound of my voice. _Hear Only My Voice_..."

This was a technique that he'd been working the hardest and longest on, and what he'd been reading all the advanced psychology, mentalist and 'Do It Yourself' hypnosis books for. Like his LIME technique, his _HOMV_ (pronounced Hōme-Vēē) is based on one of the classic phrases associated with hypnotism and mind control. Unlike his LIME power though, HOMV didn't just entrance people, it controlled what they paid attention to among many other things. It was why it had taken him so long to utilize it, otherwise he would have used it on his first night here rather than getting worked up enough to use his Trance Ripple.

For one thing, it required a great deal more delicate touch than just shouting out suggestions to people placed in a highly suggestible state. For starters, it involved, at least peripherally, the conscious mind of the subject, to the end effect of them actually providing suggestions to themselves while he just guided them through several levels of imagery.

It was exponentially more powerful than LIME or H. Illusion or even Trance Ripple. The downside was that he couldn't use it instantly and definitely not with any kind of interruption. If he even so much as missed one beat in the pattern his voice was creating, they would instantly snap out of it and he'd have to start all over.

Then there was also the matter of his knowledge, or rather his lack of it. His powers made his voice very hypnotic, yes that was true, but having a voice that made it easy to draw someone into a trance did not automatically give him the capability of walking them through mental exercises to deepen that trance and ultimately plant a suggestion that would grow into the proper actions and results that he wanted them to be. Everything he'd been doing so far was much like those party favors you hear about all the time, getting people to act silly and be amazed at how they did or are doing something that they did not mean to do.

Tricks basically, and while impressive for an eleven-year-old, if Harry wanted to make this into a real power, he needed to wise up and learn some stuff about how the human mind worked. Which is why it had taken him the better part of two and a half months of near-constant study to feel confident enough to even try this now with the very most basic suggestions that one can be given under hypnosis; Keep an open mind, and Trust me.

If you're already under hypnotic persuasion, it's only a few mental exercises and a bit of demonstrated experience to get somebody to trust you, and the same with having them keep an open mind. Harry had actually done something like what he was doing now with Neville on the train ride, but that had been very basic, and an example of a 'Trust me' suggestion exercise. What he was doing now, however, was grades above and beyond that early attempt. In comparison, the two instances would be like a First Year test question to a Third Year practical between the train ride and what he was attempting now.

Once he had his two friends deeply under and thinking about the suggestions he'd planted, allowing them to fully develop and give him a chance at having _real_ friends, Harry turned his attention back to Ron. He was still in a trance himself, although with him it was easy to confuse it for sleep, and while he'd been under the same influence of HOMV as Hermione and Neville, the suggestions he'd given them had blown right over the youngest Weasley son's head. Besides, he had other plans for this... cretin.

"Ron, stand up," Harry ordered. The redhead complied immediately.

"Stand in the middle of the room," he commanded, getting out of the way as the ginger-head moved.

"Now," he said as he stood before the lazy, selfish, gluttonous wizard, "I'm going to grab your head in a moment, and when I do, I want you to open your mind to me. You will feel it, you will feel me in your mind, but you will not fight me. Things will be very confusing for you, but that's alright. I'm doing this to clear that confusion from your mind. Clear it all away. _Brainwash_!" He didn't even give the poor boy time to nod.

First things first, he decided as Ron Weasley's mind was laid bare before him, was to find the root cause of the boy being such a jerk all the time and remove it. It came down, in then end, to three things. One of them very surprising and explained his behavior quite a bit.

First off, he was the youngest boy in a large family of nothing but boys, and he had one younger sibling, who was a girl. Classical sibling rivalry aside for the moment, Ron (until Ginny came along most likely) was the baby of the family, and a Mama's Boy to boot. Which means he only sucked up to one person, who treated him like a baby his entire life, most likely because of other psychological issues that he could better judge after getting to know Mrs. Weasley better. And thus the only way Ron knew how to suck up to someone and gain their attention was by acting like a big baby.

Secondly, sibling rivalry. That's all there was to it. Ron had five older brothers, each and every one of them just as successful or talented as the one before them. Head Boy, Quidditch team captain and Dragon Tamer, Prefect, Chief Pranksters of Hogwarts and star Beaters on Quidditch team, and then there was Ginny. The first girl born to the Weasley family in generations, and Mr. Weasley's "little princess" and the only other female in the house for Mrs. Weasley, her daughter. Enter major inferiority complex and jealousy issues.

Put together, you have a lazy bully that jealously guards anything that he considers "his", and throws a tantrum and acts like a baby whenever its threatened or doesn't do what he likes, and that would include 'his' friends as well. He also expects everyone else to do everything for him most of the time. Anything that he considers a 'waste of time' at any rate.

Taking a second look around inside the boy's head, Harry decided that Ron wasn't a total loss. After he completely blocked off and separated those core negatives at least.

Thankfully, Mr. Weasley was a good man, and quite obviously a good father. And not just in that he loved his children way. He disciplined them plenty. His way was the 'do this and these are the consequences if you don't way' and it was why Ron was in Gryffindor at all rather than Slytherin or Hufflepuff. Not that Mrs. Weasley wasn't strict in her own way, it's just that her way was the 'stick' to Mr. Weasley's 'carrot'. As the Twins would gladly attest to.

Seeing an entire life in the blink of an eye, from a singular point of view, certainly put things in perspective for Harry as he began to work. He decided that Ron wouldn't be just another 'Dudley' to him, a mental profile that he'd been fully intending to use after the adventure with the troll. He began to insert some of his own experiences and memories into Ron's where he had removed or blocked off the negatives. Mostly his memories of 'Harry-hunting', but also of being shoved into a broom cupboard and spending whole days in there with nothing but stale bread and dirty water for food.

Ron's mind very nearly rebelled as these memories slowly integrated themselves into his psyche. Just those few memories from Harry's life were anti-themas to Ron's experience so far. While his brothers had played pranks on him, they had never bullied him and no one had ever _chased_ him for _sport_ before! Mrs. Weasley casually made too much and there was always food to spare so everyone could have seconds and even thirds so no one ever went hungry. Not even when money was tight!

Seeing that his mind was having trouble coping with the new information, Harry adjusted it, making sure that he knew the memories were artificial, that they were not truly his own memories. Instead, he made it so they were stories. Stories told to him by his father and other relatives, stories told so well they felt real to him. Stories that would keep him from growing up into a bully, and to appreciate everything that he had in life.

The change was immediately apparent, but Harry had basically just rewritten the young wizard's entire personality and his mind needed to heal, absorb the information, integrate it properly. Harry knew if he pushed that he could cause some... damage. He'd done it often enough to Dudley and Vernon that he could recognize the signs by now. Not wanting to really hurt someone that could become a good friend, someday, Harry backed off for the moment and left Ron's mind, leaving behind a PHS to always leave his mind open for Harry, when he had to come back in and make some adjustments that is.

Stepping back and letting go of the ginger's head, Harry took a moment to orient himself and clear his own mind. He wasn't doing that again any time soon. Going into Ron's mind that is, though he also hoped he wouldn't have to use Brainwash either. That was pretty intense and he didn't want to use it too often.

"Er... Harry?"

He turned and saw Hermione and Neville sitting up on his bed, both of them blinking owlishly at him.

"Uh, hey guys," he said, scratching the back of his neck nervously. "How are you feeling?"

"Confused," Hermione answered at once.

"A bit... yeah, I'll go with confused too," Neville nodded.

"You... did something to us," she frowned, her face scrunching up in concentration.

"And to Ron," the boy next to her pointed at the zombified redhead.

"Er, yes," Harry freely admitted, though with some hesitance.

"What?" she snapped at him, "What did you do to us? What... what are you?"

Harry shrugged, a bit hurt at her word choice, but he'd made his decision already, it was time to come clean. He sat down on the bed opposite and began to tell them his story.

"It all started on the day I was born," he grinned and then amended, "plus about eleven years. On my eleventh birthday, I found out I was a wizard, met a friendly giant, went to Diagon Alley, got my wand, and... this is the important part... bought a piece of fruit from a man in a cloak."

"Wait, what does _fruit_ have to do with any of this?" Hermione demanded.

"Patience, I'm coming to that," he placated her, "Besides it was cursed fruit. Cursed Devil Fruit, to be exact it was the Saimin Saimin no Mi, the Hypno Hypno Fruit. I just through it was a ripe zucchini."

"Cursed? Devil?" the bushy-haired witch repeated with a screech.

"What is that?" Neville asked, "I mean, what was it?"

Harry blinked in surprise. After all, there was a vendor _selling_ these thing to the general public, in the _only_ major shopping center for the Magical World in the whole of England! How could knowledge of these fruits and the powers they granted _NOT_ be common knowledge? Especially to a pureblood heir like Neville, or a know-it-all desperate for all knowledge magical like Hermione?

"Wait, you two seriously don't know what I'm talking about?" he asked, just to clarify.

They both shook their heads. He might have cast a PHS to make them tell the truth, except he knew he already had with HOMV. They were telling him the truth, neither one knew anything about the Cursed Devil Fruits. And if these two didn't know... who else _didn't_ know?

"Cor blimey," he whispered in awe as a huge relief swelled up within him.

"Harry? You were telling us what you just did to us?" Hermione reminded him.

"Right," he nodded and cleared his thoughts. "So, uh, I uh kind of expected you to already know the basics. I mean, there is this bloke _selling_ these things right now on Diagon Alley! How could anybody not know, right? At the time... for all this time, I just thought it was a fluke of the Magical World, like buying wands or racing brooms, that everybody had one or knew someone who had gotten one."

"One what?" Neville asked.

"A Devil Fruit," he answered, "It curses the first person to eat it, you see. Tastes bloody awful, but the after effects are downright worth it in my opinion. Oh, right, uh, well, y'see, the curse is simply that whoever eats a Devil Fruit loses all strength in water. And that's full bodies of water, like the lake, not bowls or sinks or anything like that. But there is a major plus side to the curse."

"How can a curse be good?" Hermione scoffed.

"Way the vendor told me, there are three types of Devil Fruit. I don't remember much about the other two, but the one that I got and ate... gifted me with a supernatural power. In my case, since I ate the Hypno Hypno Fruit..."

"The power of hypnosis?" Hermione exclaimed. Harry just nodded his head. "You've hypnotized us?" He shrugged, then nodded again. "So... you've turned us into your mind controlled slaves?"

He shrugged a final time before asking, "Do you feel like mind controlled slaves?"

"Ron _looks_ like a zombie slave," Neville pointed out.

"Ron's a prat. Or at least he was one."

They all three had to admit the truth in that.

"So what did you do, to us?" Hermione wanted to know.

"At first, not a lot. Planted the same suggestions that I did in the rest of the school, which was to not notice me using my supernatural powers and to go into trance more easily. I had thought that everyone knew about Devil Fruits and they were as common as wands and brooms and that if people knew about my powers, they'd try to take them away from me. Now... now I'm more glad than ever that I never let anybody I couldn't trust know about them."

"As for what I just did to you and Ron, well... Let's just say that I suppressed all the bad parts of Ron and showed him a perspective he was unfamiliar with. He's processing all that right now. I did nothing of the sort with either of you however. I merely... opened your minds to allow you to hear me out. And to give me the benefit of the doubt. That is all."

Hermione frowned and shared a look with Neville. Somehow, she knew the truth in what Harry was saying. He hadn't abused his power over them, in fact she could recall now several times where he helped her and where the only way he could have helped her was by using his hypnotic powers. She also remembered the day when they learned how to fly on brooms and how Harry had helped Neville overcome his fear.

"But... why? You could have made us do anything you wanted. Anything at all. Why only go this far? Why tell us this secret? I don't see the point," she admitted with a pout.

Harry smiled and stood up.

"Because I want friends. _Real_ friends, not hypno-slaves or mindless fans and sycophants. Friends that will help me and like me because they choose to. Friends that will tell me when I'm wrong, stop me when I go too far, and argue with me just because. I accidentally turned my cousin, who used to bully me all my life, into one of those brainless fanboy types when I first was getting a handle on my powers. It was fun at first, but it got old real quick. Might as well ask why I haven't done that to Malfoy or Ron here already. Answer is simple. It's boring, and it draws attention to me."

"Boring?" she repeated.

Harry grinned. "I was hoping for a demonstration," he said.

With a snap of his fingers, Ron suddenly came out of his trance with a, "Huh? Wha?" but Harry then focused and waved his fingers at the redhead before the moment was up, and a hypnotic green spiral came out of his hands and into Ron's eyes. "You will act like Dudley from this summer," Harry ordered, triggering the memories he'd placed in Ron's mind.

Ron blinked. Once, twice, and on the third time his whole face and demeanor lit up. But not in a good way necessarily. First impression both Hermione had of this 'new' Ron was that he was seriously insane, and he _*loved*_ Harry. By every definition of the word that an eleven-year-old could conceive of.

"Hi Harry!" Ron grinned and hopped like a five-year-old in a candy shop.

"Ron, please enlighten Hermione and Neville here as to what I just did to you," he ordered.

"Sure thing Harry!" Ron smiled that insane way-too-happy smile and started speaking to the two still sitting on the bed. "See guys, the thing is Harry accidentally used his powers on his really meany cousin that always beat Harry up and chased Harry when they were younger, though sometimes he still does it, see, so it was entirely by accident that Harry, wanting to see what would happen when he touched someone while using his powers, grabbed the meany cousin by the head before the meany cousin could hurt Harry, and then suddenly Harry could see everything inside the stupid fat pig's mind and while he was doing that he was wishing real hard that the big fat meany pig cousin wouldn't be so mean to Harry anymore and would be real nice to Harry instead, so then..." he paused here to take a breath, he'd been turning red from the loss of air already, and continued with barely a blink, "because big pig cousin is a stupid idiot, he turned it into this whole thing where he started to act nice to Harry the way he wanted everybody else to act nice to him, which wasn't an act after Harry decided that he liked fat cousin acting like that and so it wasn't an act anymore because the used-to-be-mean pig cousin really wanted and liked treating Harry like the absolute best person in the whole world that deserves nothing but everything he wants no matter what!"

After it was over, Ron was huffing and puffing and his grin threatened to tear his head open it was so wide. A few moments later, Hermione and Neville finally broke out of the stupor Ron's little speech had put them into, glanced at each other and then looked over to Harry.

"He-he's not going to stay like that, is he?" Neville hesitantly asked.

Harry shook his head, "No, this is what I like to call a PHS, Post-Hypnotic-Suggestion. It's nothing more than playing pretend. Although it was a very close thing, because he's not lying about me making this behavior permanent in my cousin."

"Harry!" Hermione exclaimed, outraged.

"You haven't met my cousin," was Harry's only defense. "And I only did it in his behavior towards me, though I suppose I could have made him act like this to everyone he sees... You did hear the part about how my cousin, my own flesh and blood, on my mother's side, terrorized me for most of my childhood, right?"

"I..." Hermione was at a loss of what to say, for precisely three point two-five seconds. "Well, all right then. So long as you did nothing harmful to anyone, I suppose there's no precedent for this sort of thing. Now besides this... PHS... Can I just call it a 'suggestion' please? Only capitalists and Americans use acronyms in everything!"

Harry shrugged, "That's debatable, but whatever you're comfortable with."

"Very well," she stood to her feet and straightened her robes as much as they would allow, "Besides this suggestion that Ronald behave in this manor, what else have you done to him with your powers?"

"Harry's the best! Harry is helping me!" Ron grinned.

Harry frowned and snapped his fingers, "Take a nap Ron."

Instantly, Ron's face lost all expression, his body relaxed completely while remaining upright, and his head slumped forward like he'd fallen asleep on his feet.

"What did you do?" Hermione demanded.

"It's a trance trigger," he answered, "I have unique ones for some people, and then generic ones that I've put in place in everybody in the school. All it does is put people into a trance with just a few words, rather than me having to use my powers each and every time. I read about it in these books here."

He walked over to his trunk and pulled out all his hypnosis books and psychology texts. Hermione's eyes went wide and her mouth opened a little. Albeit nothing fell or leaked from her open mouth, the two boys could tell she was practically drooling at the sight. Ron just continued to stand in trance.

After a few moments, Hermione refocused her attentions back onto Harry Potter and his mysterious powers of mentalism. She looked briefly over at Ron and then at Neville and down at herself before glaring at Harry, who was now looking a bit sheepish.

"Uh, yes, I have hypnotized you before, yes I implanted trance triggers, no I have not done anything that outright offends your moral character," he answered the questions he knew she'd be asking.

She raised one eyebrow and crossed her arms.

"The one thing that I did do was I asked you lots of questions and learned a lot about you. I used to have a PHS... er, a suggestion in place that you couldn't lie to me, but just a few minutes ago I took that and any other lingering suggestions out. From both you and Neville. Uh, for obvious reasons I left them and a few more in place in Ron here."

"How can we trust that you're telling the truth about that? Can we hypnotize you?" she demanded.

Harry looked at her and asked point blank,"I don't know, can you hypnotize me?"

Hermione blushed and looked down, glancing at the books.

Harry shrugged and picked up the primer, the 'Idiots Guide to Hypnosis' one, he'd started with and handed it over to Hermione.

"Unlike me, you can't put somebody in a trance just by saying a few words, but it is possible for normal people to use hypnosis. I'd also willingly cooperate with you whenever you want to try it out. I'll put myself at your mercy," he confessed.

She looked up at him, suspicious.

"Why would you do that? Make yourself vulnerable? I could, theoretically, make it so you would never hypnotize me or anyone else ever again. I could make you forget you ever had these powers if some of the hearsay is to be believed about this," she argued.

He shrugged, "I trust you. And I want you to trust me. If you hypnotizing me will do that, I'm willing to take that step. I want us to be friends, Hermione. I want _real_ friends, not just brain-puppets. It took me the better part of two months to reach that conclusion, but reach it I did."

"All right," Hermione slowly conceded, hugging the book close to her chest. "I need to read up on this first. But we'll do this as soon as I'm ready. In the mean time..."

Harry raised his hands, fists closed, which he immediately put behind his back with a bit of flair, the same way one 'zips their lips and throws away the key', indicating he wasn't using his powers. "No using hypno powers on you and Neville. Got it."

"No using your hypnosis powers _at all_," she corrected him with a glare.

"But...!" he started to protest, but was silenced as she pointed her finger at him. Almost as dangerous as her wand, the thought briefly crossed his mind.

"Not at all!" she re-emphasized. "I've been paying attention as well, Harry Potter. You are a shameless flirt, hobnobbing with everyone and anyone passing your way. I thought it a bit odd, and for a while there I thought you were just what Malfoy and Ronald were saying about you. An attention-seeking glory hound, shoving his popularity into everyone's faces."

Harry winced, realizing that from a certain point of view that could be one interpretation of his actions.

"Now, I realize you were using those opportunities to hypnotize people and probably implanting all manner of suggestions. Well, that stops now. At the very least until I'm quite certain that you can be trusted at all with these... these powers of yours."

"I'm of half a mind to go straight to Professor McGonagall..." she said, half turned away.

Harry looked up sharply, a gasp caught in his throat and a look of disappointment mixed with regret filling his expression. Thankfully Hermione never saw him start to life his hand in her direction as she continued speaking.

"... but you trusted us with this much. The very least I can do is respect your privacy and that trust you've placed in myself and Neville. So I won't."

Harry looked surprised and put his hand behind his back once more, catching Neville's eye, who had seen what he'd been about to do. Neville just clenched his jaw closed and nodded once. Harry nodded back.

"Provided!" Hermione suddenly exclaimed, pointing her finger at the green-eyed boy again, "Provided that you can prove to me that you're trustworthy for however long it will take me to confirm that you're on the up and up."

Now Harry looked confused, and this time she could see that.

"If you use your powers, even once, without just cause and I find out about it," she stepped in close until her finger was poking into his chest, "Know this Potter. I will go directly to Professor Dumbledore. No one should have as much power as you've admitted to. You-Know-Who very likely went to Hogwarts the same as we are, and back then he was probably an ordinary student, just like you. And then things probably happened, he was more than likely quite popular from the fact that he had quite a following before being vanquished, and whose to say that you won't follow in his footsteps?"

Harry blinked, gulping out loud. He'd honestly never thought of it like that before.

"So. Prove to me that you're trustworthy, and I will keep your secret. And depending on what I learn when you cannot consciously lie to me, I would love to be your friend. But I can't take a chance that you won't someday have an argument with me and suddenly decide to _change_ my mind. Much like you're changing Ronald's mind right now."

Harry looked down, feeling extremely guilty all of a sudden and not sure why.

"Well, Potter?" she poked him again, "Are you up to the challenge? Can you prove to me that you're trustworthy?"

"Yes ma'am," Harry nodded. "I'll do my best."

Then he looked down guiltily and then over at the still tranced Weasley. "But, uh..."

"Oh, right, well..." she seemed conflicted for several moments before coming to a decision. "As I said, if there is just cause, I won't hold that against you. And to be quite honest, Ronald has been quite... insufferable for as long as I've known him. If he can stop being such a bully and act like a decent human being for once, it would be quite a refreshing change. So... finish fixing him and then that is it."

"What about for self defense?" Harry asked.

"What do you mean?"

In short order, he quickly explained about what he'd done to the troll before it was knocked out and also what had happened with Snape his first weekend here, as well as a few other incidents.

Struggling with the decision, Hermione finally sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "Fine! Fine, for self-defense, and _only_ self-defense can you use your powers without me being there to tell you if it's OK or not. And just so we're clear on this, I fully expect that I will say _No_ all the times that you want to use your powers that I am there for. And don't you dare go about modifying my memory anymore, Potter! I am warning you!"

Harry backed away from the poking finger, his hands up in surrender and nothing but surrender. He wasn't about to tempt fate by falling off the bandwagon this early. In fact it was no intention of his to fall off at all. Still, better safe than sorry.

"I swear! I won't do that to you anymore Hermione! And the only times I did were..."

"Yes, I remember," she told him. "At least I remember that you did and the reasons for, even if I cannot remember what it was that you made me forget."

"Ron insulting you mostly," he answered.

"Oh, yes, actually I do remember that, it just doesn't seem very important anymore..." she trailed off.

Harry just shrugged and put his arms down.

"Very well then," she sighed. "Go ahead and finish fixing Ronald. And keep him away from me for as long as you can. I have some reading to do." She then went and gathered up all of Harry's books.

"Oh wait," he quickly grabbed a mid-sized one with a bookmark sticking out of it, "I'm not done with that one yet. You can still read it, but you've got a lot to get through before you can get to it, and it's got some really brilliant ideas in here that I want to get a grasp on."

Hermione acknowledged that and quickly stormed out of the boys dorm room, books in hand.

"So... now what?" Neville asked after she'd left.

_Hogwarts_

_December 8th_

It had been an interesting month and one week.

Hermione had finished breezing through Harry's entire collection of books on hypnosis before that first weekend was even through. That Sunday afternoon and into the following morning, she tested his powers to see exactly what he could and could not do with them and that it was actually hypnosis instead of some magical mind control power like the fabled Imperius Curse. With Ron's "help" of course.

She was finally satisfied that the most his powers did was put the subject into an altered state of consciousness, roughly that of a half-awake state, she went on to explain. Harry, who had read all the books she just had, actually corrected her on several points and used the more technical terms. She tipped her hat to him, metaphorically speaking, after that.

In the week following, as the weather turned cold and the sky overcast most days, Harry spent more of his time training with Oliver Wood and the Gryffindor Quidditch team in preparation for their game that Saturday. The rest of his time, however, he spent with Hermione, Neville and Ron, albeit Ron just quietly stood to the side and never said anything.

That Friday, the day before the big game, the four of them were sitting outside, enjoying one of the last days where it could be said the weather would be agreeable enough for it, reading and talking. Hermione had mastered one of the spells they'd learned earlier in the semester, casting Bluebell Flames and capturing them and sustaining them for a lengthened amount of time. The assignment that everyone had for it was just supposed to be one day, cast and created in class and if it was still there the following day then they passed. Hermione had gotten her own glass jar from Professor Flitwick and the flames they were currently huddled around had been going for five days straight now, and were as warm as ever.

Harry was reading his latest book on hypnotism, which he'd gotten via owl order and a key-worded letter to his Aunt and Uncle, when out of the blue Professor Snape limped up to them. Much like he'd brainwashed the Slytherin Professor into doing, Harry had been ignoring Snape of late and outside of class tried not to think of him. If he remembered the attempt on his life for very long, he risked unleashing multiple Trance Ripples across the entire castle.

"What's that you've got there, Potter?" Snape sneered, standing over them.

Harry blinked, surprised and looked up at the greasy-haired teacher, although he was hesitant to describe him as a teacher if not for his long-term PHS to the petty git. Too shocked to be recognized by a man that should have been incapable of picking him out of a line-up, he just showed the man what book he was reading.

The professor scoffed, barely even glancing at what book it was before snatching it from Harry's hands. "Library books are not to be taken outside the school," said Snape. "Give it to me. Five points from Gryffindor."

Harry frowned, knowing perfectly well that the rule applied only to taking books _outside_ of the school grounds or home for the holidays. Also, he knew for a fact, a fact he could not explain knowing but a fact nevertheless, that older students, fifth year and above regularly took library books with them to the local village to study for exams while on Hogsmeade trips.

Glaring at the limping professor's back, he glanced over at Hermione, a question in his eye.

She too was glaring at the professor, but then her expression shifted to one of uncertainty. Harry shrugged and cast an H. Illusion that would make Snape turn around, return the book and then go away. He raised his hand and focused his mind and his powers on the effect that he wanted. A green spiral energy emitted from the palm of his hand, reaching all the way to Snape's limping form before dissipating a moment after.

Snape, glassy-eyed, limped in a small circle, paused in front of the students before scowling and throwing the book back into Harry's lap, in exactly the same manner he would if he were throwing it into a garbage pail. Then he spun back around and limped away and did not come back.

"Wonder why he's limping?" Harry casually queried, opening his book to the page he was last on.

"Want me to find out?" Ron suddenly offered.

The other three looked up, almost as surprised as they had been by Snape's bullying moments before. Moreso in fact, because since the week before, Ron hardly ever spoke anymore when they were together. Harry exchanged glances with the other two, then shrugged and told him, "Yeah sure, go do that Ron. Thanks for offering. I appreciate that."

Ron just nodded, stood up and walked after Snape.

"What just happened?" Hermione asked him.

"I... don't know," Harry admitted. "One impossible thing is one thing, but two impossible things happening at the same time? Something is up."

"What impossible things?" Neville asked.

"A little more than a month and a half ago, I... well, I Brainwashed Snape..." he started to explain.

"Harry!" Hermione exclaimed.

"He tried to drown me," he told her point blank.

She blinked, then blinked a few more times in rapid succession as her mind processed the information. Finally, all she said was, "Oh," and then gestured for him to continue.

"Anyway, I Brainwashed him into disassociating all information about me from _all_ information about me in his mind. He's supposed to know what I look like, sound like, who I am, all that stuff. But I completely and totally severed those connections between all that information and what his senses tell him. He still sees me, but his mind is _supposed_ to no longer be capable of recognizing that. Same for when he read my name or hears my voice. For the past month and a half, I've been a faceless, nameless Gryffindor student to him who turns in homework with the name Draco Malfoy written at the top and vice versa for Draco's homework."

"But... Harry!" Hermione started to protest once more.

"It's still my homework. And I do have to say, my grades could be better, so he's not giving me special treatment, and from the looks of it in class, Draco hasn't flunked yet, so who's to say."

"OK, so what's the second impossible thing?" Neville questioned.

"First thing was Snape recognizing me, speaking to me, and behaving normal, for him, towards me," Harry replied. "Second thing was that Ron just evolved as a person and it only took one week, where I was expecting it to take the rest of the year."

"Evolve? Ron?" Hermione half snorted, half laughed.

"Yeah," Harry nodded his head, flipping through his book, "Hence _two_ impossible things, at one time."

"What does that mean?" Neville asked.

"Evolve?" Harry attempted clarify.

"No, that two impossible things happened at the same time," he clarified in turn.

Harry finally turned to the index at the back of his book and scanned the pages until he finally found the entry he was looking for. Moments after he turned to the desired page, he finally answered Neville's last question, "It means that either I screwed up, or something else entirely has happened."

"Like what?" Hermione asked.

Harry pointed to the passage he was reading, "Like a traumatic event. Or, something else that equally screws up the human mind. Like mind-altering drugs. Or, in our case, magical potions. As for Ron, well, there I probably just underestimated the kid. I hope that is the case, because that means there's still hope for him becoming a decent human being, instead of a walking talking mouth with no brain."

"Well, actually," Neville blushed and rubbed his hands over the magical fire in a jar, "after you and Hermione go up to bed, Harry, me and Ron sit and talk for a while. We have been all week. I... I kind of made some suggestions to him on how to be a better person. Not... PHS suggestions, just friendly advice, y'know?"

Harry nodded, then shrugged. "Well, that's the one impossible thing I'm not worried about. If Snape finds out about my powers..."

"We know," Hermione answered for the both of them.

Later that evening, Ron reported that Snape had been injured on his legs, it looked like a massive bite and he could also identify other injuries that looked like claw marks and he'd been getting help from Filch rather than Madam Pomfrey. In fact, Ron further reported, it looked like the Potions Professor had not gone to see the nurse concerning his injury at all.

"You know what this means?" Harry coldly remarked to his companions. "He tried to get past that Cerberus at Halloween! That's where he was going when we saw him, he's after what it's guarding! And if I didn't know any better, I'd be willing to bet that he let the troll in too."

Hermione's eyes were wide. "No, he... he wouldn't do that! He's a Hogwarts Professor, he wouldn't try to steal something the Dumbledore is protecting!"

"Using that logic," Harry coldly countered, "you could argue that he would never try to kill a student by drowning him."

She ducked her head, stung at the comment, all the more because it was true. "I'm sorry," she said apologetically, "I... I didn't think that..."

"No, you didn't think," he cut her off, "you reacted. You have this very... unhealthy obsession with following the rules and seem to view adults as paragons of virtue that make everything all right and enforce justice, Hermione. Believe me, if the Dursley's taught me anything at all, it was that is _not_ the case."

Hermione frowned, biting her lip in thought as she considered his point.

"But still, why would he try to sneak past the defenses on Halloween? Couldn't he just go down any time, since he's a Professor and all, and steal it that way?" Neville asked.

"Not if he didn't want every one to know it was him," Hermione logically pointed out.

Harry blinked, a random thought suddenly occurring to him.

"Don't think about it, just answer this question, first thing that pops into your head," he said, "Who is the absolute last person in the castle that you would think would want to steal what is being guarded on the third floor corridor?"

Hermione and Neville both blinked and after a moments hesitation to process the question, they both answered together, "Professor Quirrel."

Harry tilted his head and frowned. "Not Professor Dumbledore?"

"He had whatever it was taken from where it had been kept safe for who knows how many years in Gringotts and put it under his protection," Ron pointed out from where he sat on the sidelines.

Harry had to nod at that, it was a good point. He just didn't say that out loud.

"Since when do you have so much to say?" Hermione practically snarled at the ex-bully.

"Since Harry implied that he wanted everyone listening to answer his question, with his tone if not with his words, which did not exclude me from participating in the conversation," Ron answered forthwith.

The three stared at him for a long moment before glancing at each other, or more like Hermione and Neville looking to Harry for an explanation.

"OK, that's one impossibility addressed, let's take care of the next," he muttered out to himself. "All right buddy, what is up with you? Be completely honest and forthcoming with all information that is relevant or could become relevant."

"I've been taking mood-altering potions and am under the effect of an unbreakable vow to Professor Dumbledore," he answered immediately and then stopped talking.

Harry reeled back, Neville's jaw dropped and his eyes went wide with disbelief, and Hermione just shut down, her entire face and body going blank and she just kept staring off into space as her mind attempted to process this revelation.

"Ooo-kaaayyy... Did not expect that," Harry had to admit out loud.

"Does..." Neville started to say something and then the disbelief overwhelmed him again and he just shook his head, his eyes starting to glaze over like Hermione's had.

"What does your vow to Dumbledore involve?" Harry asked, the first to recover, even if only partially.

"Loyalty. To him and his cause above everything else, and to whomever he appoints as his proxy if he's ever not present to give instructions," Ron told him. "The potions are a mixture, to reinforce my loyalty to Dumbledore, to curb my temper, and to limit my potential."

"Potential?" Hermione's voice croaked, having come out of her stupor enough to pay attention now.

"Intelligence, attitude towards schoolwork, ability to make friends by not allowing my empathy to expand beyond myself and one or two others," Ron shrugged.

"Hn," Harry grunted. "So, from your perspective, how has my latest PHSs affected your interpretation of the vow and how these potions affect you?"

Ron shrugged again, "Every single one of your suggestions are the exact and total opposite of what the vow and potions force me to be. I only started taking the potions since Halloween, when Professor Dumbledore noticed some... omissions in my daily reports to him. My conscious mind is forced into a struggle between the programming you've given my subconscious and the behavior the potions exhibit on the same parts of my mind and personality. They cancel each other out and so I choose for myself how I want to behave."

"Hunh," Harry grunted again, nodding his head.

"Harry..." Neville finally spoke up, "You can't break an unbreakable vow. If... if someone were to even try to do something that would break it or make them unable to perform what they vowed to do... they would die. Instantly and... and their magic would explode."

"No way to... undo it either then, hm?" he asked.

This time all three of his friends answered, "No. It's impossible. An Unbreakable Vow cannot be broken."

"Hn..." Harry stood up and started pacing back and forth.

"Ron," he stopped and stood in front of the redhead, after a moment he snapped his fingers right in front of his face and unleashed the same amount of power he typically put into Trance Ripple, but focused entirely and solely at they boy before him. "Every time you leave my presence, your mind suffers amnesia. You don't know me, who I am, anything about me, I never existed to you. The Boy-Who-Lived is a fairy tale you grew up with, it was never real. When you're in my presence and see me, you remember everything, never knowing that you forgot at all. If asked, you can honestly say that this amnesia is solely because of the potions you are now taking and that you're afraid you may start to forget other things. Also, last thing Ron, you didn't make an Unbreakable Vow to Dumbledore, you made an Unbreakable Vow to Dumbledore to forever and all time be loyal to Harry Potter. The Vanquisher of the Dark Lord. The future Leader of the Light."

He paused to wink at Hermione and Neville. After a moment, Hermione nodded and smiled. She understood what he was doing, and after hearing the revelation of what Dumbledore was doing, she couldn't say she blamed him at all. In fact, she somewhat approved. If it worked that is.

"I... But, I..." Ron started to stutter, his mind starting to shut down due to the conflict.

"What were the _exact _terms of the vow, Ron?" Neville asked suddenly.

"I vowed to be loyal to Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore when and how he asks it of me, I vowed to be loyal to any cause Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore chooses to champion and asks me to be a part of, I vowed to obey any and all commands given by Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, or those he designates as his proxy, and I vowed to always be open and honest to Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore in all circumstances," he quoted.

"I can work with that," Harry decided.

"How?" Hermione blurted out, already far beyond her depth of experience.

"I'll show you later," Harry grinned disarmingly. "For now though, here's what I want you to do Ron..."

The following day, Harry played in his first ever Quidditch match. And also nearly got thrown off his broom by, what Hermione claimed to be a jinx cast by Professor Snape, nearly swallowing the snitch in his attempts to keep from going splat against the ground. Oddly enough, Harry discovered later that afternoon that Snape had not been the one casting the jinx on him. In fact, the only reason Harry hadn't fallen off much sooner was because the man had been casting a counter-jinx at the time.

It had only taken talking Ron, Hagrid, _and_ Snape himself into believing that he was Professor Dumbledore questioning them about the event. Well, questioning Snape anyway. He'd actually had Ron and Hagrid running a bit of an investigation for him under the 'suggestion' that it was orders from Dumbledore. At first he had them investigating Snape, but after cornering the greasy-haired bastard and interviewing him under hypnotic reinforcement, he directed them to search other previously forgotten clues.

It wasn't long before the evidence and stories of multiple witnesses pointed straight at none other than Professor Quirrel. Harry thought long and hard about his next action once he came to the conclusion that everything bad happening to him, with few exceptions, kept pointing back at Quirrel, while not _directly_ pointing at him. Still, for someone with that level of cunning, to throw the suspicion off of him at every turn _before_ taking any action in the first place...

Harry had to be careful, he knew, and for the kind of discussion he wanted to have with the stuttering Professor, he couldn't just corner the man after class with an excuse about help with his homework.

… On the other hand, planting a suggestion to put the Professor into a position where he _could_ have that kind of discussion, it was actually a perfect excuse.

It took him most of the week following the game before he had all the evidence he needed, and that Friday he cornered the man after class and planted several PHS ideas in his head, which would have him in the Third Floor Corridor room an hour before curfew. Filch saw the Professor, one of the few with authorized access to the room, enter said room and then left to find any curfew breakers.

Harry had been sitting just inside the door watching the giant Cerberus sleep for a good ten minutes before the man with the smelly turban came in, and the moment he was, Harry blasted him with a point-blank H. Illusion, to make him tell the truth, coupled with a continuous Trance Touch to keep him calm.

What he discovered that night changed everything that followed.

After a very long, convoluted, and complicated interview, which had more than one surprises for Harry, amidst the backdrop of a sleeping Cerberus he discovered that Quirinus Quirrel had been a 'sleeper' Death Eater since about a year and a half before the end of the last war, and had been in Albania to 'find his master', taking yearly vacations to various locations across the continent where he thought Voldemort might have been lying in wait, recovering his strength. The first surprise was that he had found Voldemort. The next was that Voldemort had possessed him and was hidden under his turban.

The strong garlic smell was actually just a side-effect of the potion he took, coupled with the decay of his own flesh as Voldemort's spirit rotted his body from the inside out.

The biggest surprise of them all, however, was in that when he'd tranced Quirrel, both tonight and at the Sorting Ceremony at the first of the year, he'd also placed Voldemort into a hypnotic trance. A trance just as deep as what he could do with the ghosts and spirits of the castle, which meant he actually had greater influence over Voldemort than he did the spirit's host at that moment.

Questioning both in turn, he was told of their plans and several secrets that they kept, some even from each other it would seem. It was only half an hour till he was supposed to be getting up when he finally finished with the unintentional pair he'd captured. He implanted some very specific PHS and numerous triggers into both sub-consciousnesses of man and spirit and then let them go back to Quirrel's bed, while he hurried back to his own.

He had a lot of thinking to do.

Thankfully, it was the weekend and he could just make excuses to his roommates that he wanted to sleep in or wasn't feeling well, not even well enough to go see Madam Pomphrey. He'd actually just used H. Illusion to have them believe he was still in bed, as well as to 'leave him alone' by spending nearly the whole weekend outside of the dormitories, and to tell everyone else that he was just sleeping in and wasn't feeling well. It gave him the time to do some thinking, as well as to make the decision that he'd need more than just a weekend to mull things over.

That Sunday afternoon, Hermione dragged Neville back into the dormitory, despite his protests that Harry wasn't feeling well and was just sleeping in. The moment they were both inside, Harry just snapped his fingers and Neville suddenly forgot why he'd been trying to drag Hermione out nor why he'd been fighting her to come in.

"Sorry about that Nev," Harry apologized, sitting on his trunk at the foot of his bed, staring at the fire in the heater at the center of the room. "I... had some thinking to do."

"Yes, I imagined so," Hermione said in her friend's place. "However you've now had two days to yourself, so if you're not done thinking quite yet, then that means you're stuck and you need some help. Or at the very least someone more intelligent to bounce your ideas off of." She then half-curtseyed in front of him with a teasing grin on her face and shot him a look that practically screamed, 'Well? Start talking!'

"Voldemort's alive," were the first words out of his mouth.

They both just stared at him, shock overwhelming their mental processes and their responses.

Then he corrected himself, "Well, OK, alive may not be the correct term. Un-dead? Deathly-challenged? Neither living nor dying, but something inbetween? Never mind. My point is, his spirit is still around, and I don't mean as a ghost. More like a shade or a lethifold or some other kind of dark creature that can possess living creatures. He's possessing Professor Quirrel, who also happens to have been a Death Eater, one of Voldemort's followers back before You-Know-Who kicked the bucket. They're planning on stealing the Philosopher's Stone and brew up some Elixir of Life for Voldemort so he can have a body again. An immortal body at that. Oh, and they're also planning on hunting down and killing some of the unicorn herd so Voldemort can last long enough until they finally do get the Stone. That, by the way and in case I didn't tell you, is what the big dog is protecting."

He finally looked up from the fire and was greeted by the rather pleasing sight of one Miss Hermione Granger being struck speechless and too overwhelmed to think. Neville was just blinking every couple of heartbeats, his jaw practically unhinged.

After a time it got a bit annoying, so he looked at them, shrugging, and asked, "What?" The looks just continued. "What is it?" he asked, exasperated.

"You...you...you... You-Know-Who... is alive?" Hermione gasped out.

Harry shrugged again, replying, "Apparently."

"How is that possible?"

"Something he called Horcruxes, among other rather nasty rituals he performed when still alive and in his own body. That was one of the questions I asked him," he answered.

"Why haven't you... oh," Hermione blinked owlishly, her mind beginning to catch up now that it had fully processed the bomb her friend had just dropped on her.

"He-he-he-he-he-he-he-" Neville on the other hand seemed to still be having trouble. Harry slapped him a good one, maybe slipping in a bit of trance touch power into it, knocking him out of the shock. "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named IS ALIVE!"

"Apparently," Harry repeated himself.

"We've got to tell somebody about this!" he shouted.

"We can't Neville," Hermione pronounced, almost mournfully.

"Why not?" he exclaimed, his eyes wide, his breathing labored.

"Don't you see?" she threw up her arms to exaggerate her emphasis. "Everyone in the world wholly believes that... You-Know-Who is dead and gone! If we were to tell anyone, even Professor Dumbledore, who for reasons I cannot fathom Harry does not trust at the moment, no one would believe us! They would call us mad or delusional, or worse still pranksters trying to pull one over whoever we told. It might actually be worse if we did happen to find someone that would believe us and that we could convince of the truth."

"Why's that?" Neville asked, less panicked and more chastised now.

"Because of the panic!" she cried out, throwing up her arms again. "Look at your own reaction Neville! Now imagine all of the adults doing the same thing. They would all run around like chickens with their heads cut off and then much as what happens with the chicken, lay down and die anyway. People will panic and do nothing about it until they either snap out of it or something happens to them, and even then that fear will dictate whatever actions they do take, and more often than not it's the messenger that gets taken out first in situations like that."

"She's right," Harry agreed. "A person can be highly intelligent and insightful. People, on the other hand, is just one giant big dumb animal that is easily frightened and prone to violence and indifference."

At the look he received from the only acknowledged bookworm in Gryffindor, he tacked on, "So I picked up a bit more from the psychology books than hypnosis tips. Besides, it's true."

Hermione frowned, but nodded her head that she was forced to agree with his statement.

"So... what do we do?" Neville asked, almost begging for Harry to have the answer.

"Well, that's sort of why we're here," he shrugged. "Now that I know the man that killed my parents is still around, I'm not just going to laze around doing normal things like just going to school and having fun with my powers... where permitted," he hastily added when Hermione looked about to rebuke him.

"What I mean is, I have to come up with a plan, figure out what I want to do with my life and with my powers. I can't just react to everything coming, I have to act first and deal with it sooner rather than later. I mean, I know who and where Voldemort is right now and I know what his future plans are and I know that thanks to my powers I could influence him to do practically anything I want, same with his host. But that's the thing. _What_ do I get him to do?"

"Turn himself in?" Hermione helpfully suggested.

Harry rolled his eyes and sighed, jumping back onto his bed and laying down to stare at the ceiling, thinking things through. While Hermione had a valid suggestion, Harry had long ago learned the painful lesson that the people in charge did not always listen to the right people and because of that the wrong people, like Dudley and Voldemort, go away with all sorts of things. No, the only thing that stopped Voldemort the last was was that when he attacked Harry, whatever he had done backfired and blew up in his face. That told him right there that his only option was to take action himself. But what?

"Let me think about it," he said to his friends, hardly aware if they were still in the room or not.

And think about it he did. For the rest of the month until today, the second Sunday of December, and the last weekend before more than half the students went home for the Christmas Holidays. He'd come up with a lot of different stuff and asked and got input from Hermione, Neville, even Ron and most of his teachers, with the obvious exceptions of Snape, Dumbledore and those that had didn't take courses with as yet.

Today, however, he woke up with inspiration on the tip of his tongue and revelation at the back of his head. It wasn't until breakfast that it finally all culminated into one brilliant idea that Harry could almost smack himself for not seeing earlier. It was so ground-shaking brilliant that he almost couldn't wait to tell his friends, but was mindful enough that he knew this had to be kept as secret as possible. And considering his very special abilities, it would be as secret as secret could be.

So, after breakfast, but before class was due to start, he grabbed Hermione, Neville and Ron and pulled them all into an unused broom closet somewhere on the seventh floor. Funny that he hadn't noticed it until he'd passed by the same painting three times in a row. At least that's the impression he left with his friends.

"I've decided on what to do about Voldemort," were the first words out of his mouth once he was assured of their privacy.

"Well what is it?" Hermione asked.

Harry grinned and struck a post, fists on his hips, "I'm going to take over the world and and declare him Public Enemy Number One. Oh, and sentence him to permanent death as soon as I can figure out how to make it stick without blowing up half the island..."

"But... Harry!" Hermione screeched.

"Yes Hermione?" he said with an understanding tone, still posing.

"You just said you're going to take over the world!" she shouted, throwing up her hands.

"Yes Hermione," he said with the same understanding tone.

"You do know that that would make you as bad as Voldemort, don't you? That's what he was trying to do when he killed your parents and all those other people! He was trying to take over the world! And you're saying that you want to do that as well? To be like Voldemort?"

Harry scrunched up his face, thinking about it for a bit, then replied in an understanding tone, "Yes Hermione."

"Argh!" she screamed, pulling at her bushy hair.

He chuckled and decided to explain. "Look, I'm not going to do it like Voldemort did. For starters, no killing. Definitely not while I'm still a kid! Secondly, Voldemort didn't really want to take over the world. He just wanted to bully everybody. He didn't care who was in charge so long as they toadied to him and he got to cause lots of people pain and killed at least a few people a day. Really, I asked him under hypnosis and that's _exactly_ what he wanted to do, long-term plan. And last but not least, Voldemort didn't have my special powers."

"So that's your plan?" she screeched, pointing at him accusingly, "Do exactly what I warned you not to do, change people's minds with mind controlling hypnosis? That's actually worse than Voldemort!"

Harry shook his head and sighed. "No, you're not getting it Hermione. Just think about it for a bit."

"What's to think about? You said you want to take over the world by controlling people's minds!"

"And how is that different from armies marching all over the world to subjugate people and forcing them against their will to bow to them and put them in charge?" he challenged.

"Well... they... they... They use democracy now anyway!" she shouted back.

"So instead of one king or dictator, there's a whole committee of people that are getting bowed down to and paid by people that they either trick or bribe to put them in charge?" he questioned.

"That's not the way it works!" she protested.

"That's not the way it is _supposed_ to work, but that _is_ the way it works," he pointed out.

"People have the right to free will! If you take that away from them, they just become your puppets, nothing better than... V-Voldemort's toadies if you ask me," she huffed and turned her back on him.

"Well first off, I'm not going to go around and start turning people into mindless idiots that do only what I say. They do that already and Ron is living proof that more than half the wizards alive today are already mindless idiots. No offense Ron."

"None taken," the redhead shrugged, "Besides, it's true. The smartest man I know is my father and he can't even understand the simplest things that muggles do, and he's a Department Head at the Ministry of Magic. And Dumbledore still hasn't figured out that my loyalties now lie with Harry James Potter rather than him. After what you told me about all these things you've learned from muggle books, I have to admit that no wizard alive can match wits with even a muggle child."

"See?" Harry gestured at the living proof.

"You could have programmed him to say that!" Hermione pointed out with an accusing stare.

Harry sighed and resisted the urge to roll his eyes again. Whenever Hermione started pulling out this argument, he knew there was no way he would win any time soon. Not without cheating, and she could usually spot it when he'd done that right away.

"Look, I only had the idea this morning, _during_ breakfast, and I dragged you all here right after. There was no time for me to program any response into Ron for this sort of thing. Well... not yet at least, but I'm working on something that should let me plant a full PHS matrix with the same energy of an H. Illusion."

Hermione crossed her arms and glared at him.

"Uh, anyway, I digress. My point is, I couldn't have hypnotized Ron and you've gotten good enough at it now to know when I hypnotize you, even when it's just to tell you to forget things, or that I even hypnotized you in the first place, you still remember it afterwards."

She grimaced but nodded her head, going over what had happened this morning so far in her mind and had to admit that there were no 'gaps' in her memories that she'd learned to associate with Harry's hypnosis. "All right that's true. But I still don't think it's a good idea you taking over the world! Are you going to gather an army and force everyone to bow down to you and pay taxes to you so you can conquer every country in the world? Are you going to massacre all those that don't follow your orders or that might be a bit resistant to hypnosis like I am?"

"No," Harry shook his head, "You haven't even heard the best part yet. See, I'm going to take over the world by getting everybody to make me their leader by unanimous voting. Democracy in action."

"By hypnotizing them?" she was still glaring at him.

Harry scoffed and pulled a book out of his bag and let her look at it for a bit before answering, "That wouldn't work. Too many others have already tried it before for me to even consider it. No, I'm going to do exactly what the so called honest politicians do. I'm going to make the people elect me King of the World because they like me and believe I can do the job, and just hypnotizing that wouldn't work. They need to believe it, and believe it fully and without question."

"See, hypnosis is all about tricking the mind," he explained, "That's why hypnotic commands are called suggestions instead of directives or whatever. The conscious mind can always override whatever I tell a person to think, do, or believe. That's what the conscious mind does after all, it resolves arguments made between the Id, a person's instinctive and animal-based impulses, and the Super Ego, the image of what a person believes themselves to be and what their higher decision making process begins with. When I hypnotize someone, all it does is implant those suggestions amidst the Id and bypassing the conscious mind entirely. But if I make a suggestion that is too far outside of what their Super Ego will allow, then they can snap themselves out of it and make the choice not to follow the suggestion."

"In there," he pointed at the book he'd handed her, "are prime examples of leaders using subliminals and other means of controlling their people, and when the people got sick of it, in spite of those controls being in place in their minds, they still revolted and tore down those that thought they'd programmed them to raise their own selves up. In order for my idea to work, first thing is I have to be the type of person that people can and will see as a leader. So that means that I have to have perfect marks in all my classes and I have to be first choice for Prefect and Head Boy."

"Of course just having good marks won't be enough, I have to actually be good enough, I have to really know it all. All about magic and maybe even all about everything else. About my powers and the human mind for certain, but also about other things like... the state of world affairs... general science and technology... and history. History is very important. When it's about people, I really don't care one bit about goblins anymore, Binns has taken all the fun out of that. Well... except of course that they like to start rebellions every century or so, but they're not due for another fifty some odd years."

"Harry, you're... you're really serious about all this... aren't you?" Hermione asked, her voice quiet and small. He noticed her eyes tearing up a bit and her crossed arms had switched to hugging herself.

He just nodded, not sure what he could say about it.

"Well I... I... I'm not sure what to say... Except this," she handed him back his book and looked him in the eyes. "You're not going to become the ruler of anything..."

"...until you start learning how to revise properly. And don't expect me to let you off the hook so easily either, just because we're friends. I'll push you until you can't stand it anymore and then I'm not going to let you rest until you know it better than I do, whatever it will be."

Harry looked surprised, not only did he not have to hypnotize her, but she actually made the decision to follow him without him doing anything other than being her friend. He was stunned.

"What?" she said at his look. "Well... what did you expect? You're my first and one of my only friends in the whole world. If you are committed to doing this, then I will help you as best I can. Just so long as you don't turn into a tyrant."

Harry grinned and grabbed her up in a hug, which she enthusiastically reciprocated.

"No chance of that happening with you as my conscience. And Neville too of course," he added.

Neville blinked, looking back and forth between his two friends and Ron. He paused a moment longer on Ron. "Er, what about...?" he gestured towards the silent redhead, a bit worried.

"Oh, well, I suppose I'll always need a scapegoat lieutenant at one point or another..."

"Harry!" Hermione slapped him as he put her down.

"Kidding! Kidding! Mostly. But still kidding!" Harry hastily defended himself. "But in all seriousness, it would probably be a bit of a bother if Dumbledore found out about this rather... ambitious plan of mine before I was ready to defend myself."

He let out a heavy sigh, running his fingers through his hair. "I really wanted to hold off on doing this for as long as possible. I mean with somebody just a touch mad... there's no way to anticipate that kind of mind. And if I'm going to implant a long-term PHS into Professor Albus Dumbledore's mind, well then I need to know what kind of mind it's going into. Hope he's not a paranoid schizophrenic, he would be impossible to hypnotize, because he'd actually be several people!"

"What... Why... What," Hermione asked, "would you implant into his mind anyway?"

"To forget that he had Ron and Hagrid give loyalty oaths to him, and that anytime he thinks about it, he'll remember that he already did and then immediately forget about it again."

"Oh, well, that's actually... rather sensible..." she sounded surprised as she tapped her chin thoughtfully.

"But... what are you going to do about Voldemort?" Neville asked the question.

"Oh that, well, every hero needs a villain to make him the people's champion, right?" Harry shrugged. "Now I'm not about to go and help him or anything, but he's already got some things in motion that may or may not get him his body and his power back. I'll just make sure that I'm where I need to be to stop him and make sure that people know about it too. I'll need Ron for that. Bad a friend as he was, he knew how to talk to people and to get them to believe him. Probably because he was an idiot and people figured he was too stupid to make stuff up."

"That's how Percy got to be so popular, he told me so himself," Ron acknowledged.

"So... what are you going to do about Voldemort?" Hermione asked this time.

Harry shrugged. "I'm not going to do anything at the moment. I'm going to let him go on believing that no one knows he's still around and that I don't know his plans at all. That way he doesn't change them up and I don't have to keep hypnotizing him to find out what did or didn't change. First things first though, I need to become the top wizard student at this school and the sooner the better."

"I'll help!" Hermione grinned brightly, already planning on being the Smartest Witch at Hogwarts.

"Uh, me too?" Neville reluctantly agreed.

"I'll do whatever you say Harry!" Ron grinned brightly.

"I thought I told you to stop emulating Dudley?" Harry shook his head, opening the door to the corridor.

They hurried to class, where Harry and Hermione both were the most avid note-takers from that point onwards. Even in History of Magic and Potions classes. In the afternoons, they both spent their time revising their notes and helping Neville and Ron both with their assignments, learning more from teaching the subject than just learning it by themselves. Harry's grades were soon matching Hermione's in every course, and even outshining her in one or two, though he never said how.

The rest of the year passed like this, until it was time for the Christmas Holidays that is. Of course Harry had little to no intention of going back to the Dursley's, despite knowing that it could actually be bearable being home for once, but neither was he particularly interested in staying behind with just himself and less than a dozen other students across the Four Houses and the Professors themselves.

So, he signed up for leaving, and then went home with Hermione. Of course she wrote ahead to her parents and they were fully expecting him. He even let her use Hedwig for it, while making it seem to the Professors that he'd been writing his own family instead of Hermione's.

To his shock and surprise the holidays did not turn out to be the picture perfect family event. No, many strange and wonderful and very exciting things happened. But that's another story...

_To Be Continued..._


	6. Interlude: Christmas

Interlude – Christmas With The Grangers

_Hogsmeade Station_

_December 23_

"Are you sure it's OK with you're parents, Hermione?" Harry asked for the fifth time since they'd left the castle.

"Of course it is, Harry," she assured him, "Thanks to you lending me Hedwig, I was able to send letters to my parents quite often and ironed out all the details ahead of time. There is nothing to worry about. Trust me!" she laughed and playfully shoved him.

He laughed in return and tried to quell his fears.

It was the first time, ever, that he had ever gone to a friend's house, let alone one that just so happened to be female. Come to think of it, he'd never really had friends before Hogwarts, so not only had he not gone to another's house or met their parents, he'd never done any of the things that Hermione, Ron, and even Neville seemed to take for granted. He was seriously stressing over making a good impression, enough that he started to worry his powers might interfere or start going out of control, the same as the other times he'd been stressed.

"Harry..." Ron mumbled, "Can... can we go over it, just one more time? Please?"

Harry sighed and smiled to himself. At least there were a few things he was confident about, and his control over Ron being just one of them. His plan regarding Dumbledore and the Voldemort-Possessed-Quirrel another. Hermione, on the other hand, still had some reservations.

"There's nothing to go over, Ron. You go home, and you _don't_ talk about what I've told you, or if anyone asks about me, tell them that we play chess and talk about Quidditch all the time. Because guess what?" Harry waved his fingers in front of Ron's face as he brought them together and snapped. Ron jerked back and then shook his head, like he'd just woken up from a nap. "That's all we do," Harry finished his statement.

"Oh yeah, that's right!" Ron grinned and nodded his head. "Have a Happy Christmas, Harry!"

"You too Ron. We've still got the entire train ride," Harry patted his 'friend' on the shoulder.

"I understand _why_ you have to do that Harry, but do you really have to hypnotize Ronald for _everything_?" Hermione asked him as they stepped onto the waiting train. Their luggage had already been loaded, so it was just a matter of a queue to get on.

"Apparently so," Harry shrugged. "I really wish I didn't have to though. Both for the reasons you're thinking of, but also because it's getting really tiresome to keep having to do it every five minutes."

"Hey Harry," Neville said as they made their way to the rear compartment, the same one they'd all ridden up in on the first train ride to school, "Want to play Exploding Snap once we're under way?"

"Sure!" Harry grinned, happy to be offered, and he felt he was getting better at the intense magic game.

Once everyone was settled in their cabins, they expected to leave soon after, but after more than ten minutes, they were still just sitting there, and the boys were considering just starting there game regardless. Before they could though, the door to their compartment was opened rather suddenly and without warning.

"Professor McGonagall?" Hermione exclaimed.

The Transfiguration teacher acknowledged her student's exclamation with a brief smile, but then her standard stern expression resettled on her face as she turned to Harry. "Mister Potter? If I may ask, what is it exactly that you are doing here?"

Harry frowned. He hadn't considered this. Let's see how far he could take it without resorting to his powers.

"Whatever do you mean, Professor?" he innocently responded. "I am waiting to depart for the holidays, much as I'm sure everyone is waiting to do so."

"And when exactly did I receive your permission slip?" she asked him pointedly.

Harry frowned. He had two options here. He could either keep trying to talk her around and wait for her to lead him into whatever verbal trap she had waiting, or he could do the 'Jedi Mind Trick' thing. His hands were already twitching expectantly. Hermione, however, seemed to know what he was thinking and put her own hand on top of his and squeezed warningly.

OK then, he decided, let's see where this goes.

"I informed you when it was first announced that I was going on the train for the holidays, Professor. At no point did you tell us that you needed any kind of permission slip. Not in the letter we got at the first of the year, not in all our meetings in the Common Room, not in all your classes, not during last night's feast, or this morning when you were helping everyone pack up. None of the older students mentioned it. Ron has several older siblings that went to Hogwarts and he never mentioned anything about a permission slip. Hermione?"

"My parents and I were never informed that there was any sort of permission slip that needed to be filled out prior to my departing, and I have not turned in any permission slip either, Professor McGonagall. Was I supposed to have?" she asked, just as innocent as Harry to the older witch's eyes.

The Deputy Headmistress frowned and would have cursed under her breath if she didn't have most excellent control over herself in most situations. She still couldn't believe Albus was making her do this. And without an explanation either. Still... the Headmaster had been most insistent that Harry was not to leave on this train, and he fully expected the First Year student to be back in the castle for Lunch.

"Be that as it may, Mister Potter, the Headmaster would like to see you. If you'll come with me?" she stated it more than asked.

To her surprise, he turned to Miss Granger with a look that seemed to be asking her permission. She seemed torn and then took her hand away from his and nodded with a heavy sigh. The moment after that, she would not remember, not even under Veritaserum. The next thing she _would_ be aware of and would remember, was walking back into the castle, sans Harry Potter and no good answers for Albus Dumbledore, laying the foundation for later suspicions, which would then eventually lead to mistrust and accusations.

All of that was for later, however, for the moment, Harry focused his power and held up his hand, a green spiral shooting out of it to entrance Professor McGonagall.

"Why are you so insistent that Harry not come with me for holiday, Professor McGonagall?" Hermione asked before Harry could even think of a question.

"Albus insisted that Mister Potter not leave on this train and that he was to remain at the castle for the holiday," she answered with no hesitation or her usual sternness.

Frowning, Harry and Hermione exchanged a look. She hesitated and seemed to hem and haw over the decision for several long moments before nodding her permission to him. He nodded grimly back to her, knowing how difficult it was for her to basically give him the freedom to brainwash their teacher. Well, not _Brainwash_ brainwash, but... well, whatever.

Putting up both hands this time, Harry unleashed his power on the Transfiguration Professor's mind and after the green spirals had faded away, she merely blinked once, turned on her heels and walked away. Minutes later, the train was underway. Once they were in the open countryside, Harry let out a sigh of relief as he released all the tension that had been building in his body since they had let Professor McGonagall go.

"What did you have her do?" Hermione asked, once she saw he was no longer tense.

Looking to his friend, Harry shrugged and replied, "Do? Nothing. I basically combined my H. Illusion with H. Trance and through the use of both made her believe that I had agreed and was leaving the train with her and that if anybody asks, I was in the castle somewhere, but she didn't know where."

"H. Trance?" Hermione repeated. "I remember what you've told us about your Illusion technique, but this is the first I've heard you mention anything about an H. Trance technique."

"Sorry. It's basically a mid-range of my Trance Touch and Trance Ripple. All it really does is enhance a hypnotic trance, without walking the person through the relaxation exercises. My H. Illusion, on the other hand, is more like a transmitted post-hypnotic suggestion. By using both at the same time, I increase the power of the illusion and make it nearly unquestionable in the person's mind."

"Don't ever do that again!" Hermione snapped at him, startling him.

"Wait, what?" Harry was confused. "Hermione, she wasn't going to let us go unless she thought I was with her! You could see that, plain as I could! There's nothing harmful about it, and I did put in a time limit, next time she goes to sleep, the illusion wears off completely! So, what's the problem?"

"The problem?!" she screeched.

Getting in his face, finger pointed right between his eyes, she yelled, "The problem, Harry Potter, is that you basically just admitted that you have a way of making your _Suggestions_ completely unnoticeable!"

Harry sighed and rolled his eyes. "Hermione," he said calmly, "I've put you in deep trances more than once now. And you've admitted, and I have tested you each and every time, that you recall everything that you experienced while in the deep trance. That's all I did, and that is all that my H. Trance does. It puts someone into a deep trance. Nothing more. I swear."

"Do not use your Deep Trance Techniques on me or anyone ever again! Do you understand me?" she screamed, still in his face.

"Why?" he frowned and crossed his arms, staring her in the eyes.

She quickly averted hers, pushing him back. "I've read the same books you have Harry. I know what a person can be made to do, to believe when they're in a deep trance. Even the doctors who applaud the benefit of hypnosis acknowledge that deep trances can be dangerous if not handled by a _trained_ professional! Your work with Neville and Ron aside, you are still very much an amateur Harry and you have not been trained by _anyone_! What if you hadn't put in a limit with the deep trance illusion you placed Professor McGonagall in?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, arms still crossed.

"What if she always believed from now on that you were in the castle, but never knew exactly where? What if she didn't know where you were, even while you were in her very classroom?" she argued.

Harry frowned, acknowledging her point, but he still had to make his. "I understand your fears, Hermione. I really do. But the reason I put in a time limit like I did is for the exact opposite reason that you're arguing about."

Hermione scoffed at him, refusing to believe his excuses.

"If you'll recall, I've tried to put the same _Suggestions_ that you're worried about into Professor Snape's mind. And, again if you will recall, he keeps breaking them down so I have to keep reapplying them, or applying different measures to get him to leave me alone. I also put in permanent PHS triggers into all of our teachers. Professor McGonagall is the one that I've noticed tends to stop responding to those triggers the first out of all the Professors. At first I thought it was the same thing with Snape, but no. She's now 'aware' that I did anything at all, not like he is after every time he confronts me the way that he does. It's just like the Suggestions I put into her mind were wiped clean and never put there in the first place."

"How do you mean?" she now paid attention, curious.

"It took me a while, but after our fourth or fifth class with her, I figured it out," he shrugged. "Remember our first day of Transfiguration? Professor McGonagall was sitting there on her desk... as a cat."

The bushy-haired witch blinked and slowly started to nod her head. "You can't hypnotize animals. Professor McGonagall is an Animagus. When she transforms, she's essentially an animal, and whatever post-hypnotic suggestions that you placed in her mind lose their grip because her mind is now the mind of an animal."

"Well," he shrugged, "The mind of a human, in an animal's body. I think until I can actually learn how to hypnotize animals, every time an Animagus transforms between human and animal, the animal part wipes away any and all PHS traces. After all, I was just able to give her a very complex PHS just before. The limit I imposed was more along the lines that she wouldn't allow herself to turn into a cat until tonight."

"Why not just make it so she would never transform again?" Hermione argued, playing the Devil's Advocate a bit.

"Would raise suspicions, and I strongly suspect that she could overcome that the same way Snape keeps overriding my PHS to him. Besides, if turning into an animal is intimate enough that hypnotic suggestions get 'forgotten' as easily as it appears to be, then I suspect that there is likewise some... some kind of—of give and take between the two. A, oh what is the word, oh! Right, a symbiosis. An Animagus needs to be their animal side as often as they would need to be their human side."

"That's a rather debatable point of view," said Hermione, finally relaxing her hostility towards him some.

Harry smiled and happily began a rather stimulating argument over Man's "Animal nature" versus his "Spiritual consciousness" in a psychological debate one would normally see on a college campus between post-grads rather than an eleven-year-old and a twelve-year-old on a magic train.

_King's Cross Station_

_December 23_

_Evening_

When the train finally arrived, the students wasted no time in gathering their belongings and seeking out their respective parents. Harry stuck with Hermione, lugging his trunk alongside him, Hedwig's cage perched precariously on top, until he could find a luggage carrier that is. Unfortunately, they could find none on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, and so after a few minutes looking, the pair bid farewell to their wizard friends, who were still searching the crowds for their own guardians, and then made their way to the portal that would lead them to Platforms Nine and Ten.

Just as they were about to step through, Harry glanced back and noticed a commotion back at the train, but he just shrugged and turned and followed Hermione through the portal. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on the point of view) Harry completely missed the fact that the 'commotion' was in fact Professors Dumbledore, Snape, and Quirrel Apparating onto the platform and began searching the train for "Potter" alongside several Aurors.

On the other side of the portal, Hermione quickly found her parents and was soon smiling brightly as she ran up to them, leaving Harry to deal with both trunks. Moments later, introductions were made and Harry was rather impressed with Hermione's parents. They were sort of a mix-up between all the 'cool parents' you heard stories about, and what TV and movies showed real parents to be like, IE strict but fair.

They quickly acquired some trolleys for their trunks and then started making their way for the exit. Unfortunately given the fact that the Grangers actually lived outside of London, that meant getting on the Underground connection to one of the parking lots that were quite a ways away. It was the better option than walking four or five miles on the busy streets above.

Interestingly enough, in looking back on it, Harry would decide that the next few series of events were some of the best in his life, if only because of the consequences of them.

"Hey there pretty lady," a Scottish-accented punk suddenly stood in their way. All around them, his 'friends' had surrounded them, maybe half a dozen. "These your kids?" he asked Mrs. Granger.

"What do you want?" she asked nervously, drawing both Harry and Hermione closer to her.

"Well, that is the question, isn't it?" he spoke, emphasizing his Scottish accent with every syllable. "Give us the purse and those two trunks there. For starters."

Harry frowned, reaching for his pocket where he normally kept his wand, only to recall that he'd left his wand in his trunk after departing the train. Hermione had as well. They'd been going into the Muggle World, after all, and there was the Statute of Secrecy and everything. The punk grabbed Mrs. Granger by the back of the neck and pulled her forward, startling a scream out of her.

"Mum!" Hermione cried, tears brimming in her eyes.

The other punks around them all laughed. Harry clenched his fists impotently, feeling truly powerless for the first time in months. He had almost forgotten what it felt like. He would not forgive those that had just reminded him of it's bitter taste. It also reminded him that he should probably check up on the Dursley's while he was back.

"Give us the luggage!" the punk screamed into the woman's face.

"Leave her alone!" Harry cried out, moving to physically separate the two. Only to be pushed to the ground for his efforts. It was like being back in elementary school with Dudley and his friends all over again.

Harry's eyes flashed green, and his clenched fists began to glow. When he spoke again, there was an odd quality to his voice that grabbed everyone's attention and held it.

"_I said!, leave her alone! If you want to bully someone, bully me!_" he screamed, unaware that he was using his HOMV technique.

The punk released Mrs. Granger and then grinned viciously down at Harry, a grin mirrored by all the others. "As you wish," was all he said before kicking Harry was he was still down on the ground. That was all the others were waiting for and soon Harry was reminded of the other part of elementary school with Dudley and friends.

Minutes later, the police had been summoned and every last one of them arrested. Mrs. Granger and Hermione had run and gotten help, though afterward, Hermione wished she had instead gone for her wand in her trunk, rather than leave Harry alone as they called for the police. Once they had pulled the last of the punks off of Harry, they immediately rushed him to the hospital, seeing him as a bruised and bleeding lump of flesh.

Rather than with the Grangers in their guest room, Harry spent his first week of the Christmas holiday in Charing Cross Hospital. While there, he picked the brains of every adult doctor, psychologist and psychiatrist that the hospital had on staff. Among other tidbits of information here and there, he also got their respective opinions on the concept of hypnotism. Almost all of them agreed, it was just a way of relaxing the mind and getting the subconscious to 'play tricks' on the conscious waking mind. Only two out of more than twenty on staff even realized they were under hypnosis while he was questioning them.

After he was fully healed and released into the care of the Grangers for the remainder of his vacation, Harry sat down with Hermione to discuss his new outlook on life, post attack and post hospital stay.

"Oh Harry," Hermione busied herself with fluffing pillows and putting them all around his chair where he sat, "I'm so very sorry that..."

"That what?" he interrupted her, taking her by the wrist and applying a brief pulse of his Trance Touch, just enough to calm her down. "That I got hurt? That I used my powers incorrectly and wound up paying the price for it? Acting before thinking, right. Or that you asked me _not_ to use my powers and that was possibly the reason that I got hurt?"

She blushed and ducked her head, telling him more than enough. He smiled and let go of her hand.

"Hermione?" he said to her mane of hair. "Hermione? Please look at me. It's not your fault. Truly, it's not. If anyone, it is my fault. Like I said, I used my powers improperly. I could have had them dancing in their underwear and giving us all their worldly possessions, but instead I was impulsive and wasn't paying attention to my words. If nothing else, this experience has taught me that words are important. And they can hurt."

"Oh Harry!" she burst into tears and launched herself at him, hugging him tight.

Harry held her and let her cry herself out, not even trying to use his powers or do anything to 'suggest' the pain go away any sooner than it naturally should. He just held her like a friend was supposed to and let her get it all out. He took the opportunity to start thinking, or rather rethinking his decision from before they'd left on Christmas vacation.

Take over the world? Seriously? He asked himself. He'd let the power go to his head and other than a couple incidents here and there, he hadn't met any real opposition to the use of his hypnotic powers. Now he finally had and it opened his eyes.

There was no feasible way for him to unite all the people in the world under one banner. Even if he _could_ hypnotize the whole planet, and he knew for a fact that he could not do that _at all_, he would have to basically keep every single person in the world under a hypnotic state permanently for it to work. That was not happening. All arguments about free will versus imposed will aside, he was not going to be the one to do it. Period.

Therefore, Harry re-purposed his plans for the future, even as he sat there holding Hermione in his arms. Dumbledore and Voldemort both had plans regarding him. Dumbledore wanted to control him, Voldemort wanted to kill him. Not immediately, but in stages. Both employed the magical skill they called Occlumency, which did absolutely nothing to hinder his Devil Fruit powers whatsoever, but they didn't know that.

Voldemort's plans primarily involved getting his body back, followed by his power, his followers, and only after he had all that did he plan on killing Harry "as an example" in front of those it would make the greatest impact on. Dumbledore knew Voldemort wanted the Stone in the school, knew that he was killing unicorns to survive, and _suspected_ Professor Quirrell of aiding Voldemort in someway. He did not in fact know that Voldemort had possessed the Defense Teacher's body. Not the way that Harry did anyway.

Long term plans, Harry could not pry from Dumbledore's steely grip on his secrets. The man loved secrets and controlling everyone around him. Odd that he was most attracted to the people he never had any hope of controlling. Short term, he wanted to 'test' Harry and gauge just how malleable he was and in what ways, having planned ahead of time a number of challenges for him and his 'friends' to overcome throughout the year. Those friends were to include Ron Weasley, and whoever else that could also be manipulated and controlled. From what he'd managed to get from the Headmaster, Harry knew Hermione fell perfectly into the open slot. By the same token, there were certain others that did not.

Harry decided that his first order of business was to make alliances, if not true friendships, with those that did not fit in with the Headmaster's plans for him. Second order of business, stop Voldemort from getting his body back and cut off whatever 'life support' he has that's keeping him going. That latter part was more long term than the former. Third, find someway to toughen himself up, because wanting to take over the world or not, Harry had enemies and the way he was right now, there was no way he could defend himself let alone begin to defeat any one of them! Finally, he had to get protection, serious protection. And not just magical or physical either.

Hermione had stopped crying. He pulled back and looked her in the eye. Then he asked her a very important question, one he had no clue as to the answer for.

"Hermione, do you know where I might get some self-defense training?"


End file.
